Automotive Engineering - May 2024 - 25

COVER STORY
" Solid state is,
by nature, safer
for disassembly
compared to
lithium-ion. "
interested. It's just a matter of time and
commitment to build a technology that's
viable for recycling for lithium metal. Not
everyone is as advanced as they are in
Korea. But, if there is enough interest and
also enough support from the government
from various regulatory pathways, I
think they'll definitely bring a good tailwind
to such industry investment. "
Watch your waste stream
There's no lack of federal money headed
toward domestic battery production and
use. President Biden's Inflation Reduction
Act (IRA), passed in August 2022, included
money for 2,300 grid-scale battery
plants along with the better-known electric
vehicle tax credits worth up to $7,500.
But the IRA's emphasis on domestic production
is also reshaping where EV batteries
will be made and where the materials
will come from.
Aqua Metals has been running a pilot
of its closed-loop metal recycling process
for a little over a year. David
Regan, vice president of commercial at
Aqua Metals, told SAE Media that work
is progressing on its Sierra ARC
(AquaRefining Campus) processing
center in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial
Center. Aqua Metals said the ARC " will
be the first sustainable lithium battery
recycling center in North America and
the first commercial-scale deployment
of our Li AquaRefining technology. "
Regan said the equipment was being
installed this spring, and he expects
black mass to be going in over the
summer. The ARC should be in full production
by the end of the year, he said,
and Aqua Metals has a target of processing
3,000 tons of black mass in the
first phase, with 10,000 tons as the target
for the next phase.
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
" We don't see any issues getting
feedstock for ourselves at up to 10,000
tons, at all, " he said. " We're talking to a
lot of black mass creators. It's just really
a matter of pricing. We're also engaged
with OEMs and cell manufacturers.
Between now and 2030, they're going
to scale to a terawatt of cell manufacturing.
That's going to produce a significant
amount of manufacturing scrap.
They don't want that to go to waste.
The OEMs have spent money on that
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May 2024 25

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Automotive Engineering - May 2024

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