Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2023 - BET-19

mass to the hubs. Soon after, Glencore
said it would supply scrap and end-of-life
Li-ion batteries to Li-Cycle and like LG
Chem, will " offtake " black mass and other
materials from the recycler.
Another Li-Cycle partner is General
Motors. By 2023, Li-Cycle will launch a
recycling center near GM's Ultium battery-cell
plant in Ohio. Li-Cycle opened
its third spoke facility in Arizona last May,
with the ability to process up to 10,000
tons of battery manufacturing scrap and
depleted Li-ion batteries annually.
Tim Grewe, Director of Electrification
Strategy and Cell Engineering at GM, said
the company is pursuing various paths to
keep batteries out of landfills and deliver
metals at less than the cost of mining
them, including the partnership with LiCycle
in Ohio. " There's the recycling path,
the secondary-use path and the refurbished
path, " he said. " We don't yet know
where the market will go. "
Redwood: Full-Circle Pioneer
Redwood Materials, which said in 2021
that it had raised $775 million from investors
and venture firms, is headed by
former Tesla CTO JB Straubel. The company
intends to not only capture metals
from old batteries, but also process
REDWOOD'S PROCESS
INPUT MATERIALS
RECYCLING OPERATIONS
HYDROMETALLURGY
BATTERY FOILS
CELL
MANUFACTURING
BYPRODUCT
Collection
Safe storage
Battery sorting
Material-specific pre-processing
END-OF-LIFE
BATTERIES
Mechanical separation
Copper sulfate
Mixed metal sulfate (Ni, Co)
Anode copper foil
Lithium sulfate
Byproducts also include graphite and gypsum
Cathode
Active
Material
CELL
MANUFACTURERS
those materials into new cathodes and
anode copper foils - critical components
now mainly made in Asia. According to
Redwood, it can recapture 95 percent
of the elements, including nickel, cobalt,
lithium, and copper, from Li-ion batteries,
then reprocess them into new battery
materials for its customers.
The company currently processes six
gigawatt-hours of Li-ion batteries annually
but is expanding rapidly. By 2025,
Redwood said it aims to ramp up to annual
production of 100 gigawatt-hours
of cathode active material and anode
copper foil, enough to supply a million
EVs. The hope is to expand up to
500 gigawatt-hours of these materials
annually by 2030 - sufficient for five
million EVs.
The company operates a 175-acre campus
in Nevada, close to California's large
EV market. Production of the anode copper
foil will begin in Nevada at the end
of 2022, with Panasonic's Gigafactory the
first customer. A partnership with Ford
was announced in 2022, and the company
also has agreements with Volvo, Proterra,
and Panasonic. In 2022, Redwood linked
up with Toyota, initially focusing on endof-life
solutions for the hybrid batteries
for vehicles like the Prius.
Also in 2022, Volkswagen Group of
America said it was partnering with
Redwood
to
Volkswagen,
recycle
Porsche,
batteries
and
hicles. Steven Rufo, VW's
Audi
from
veDirector
of
Group Service and Technology, said that
Redwood has already begun recycling
the company's packs and modules, and
that the pickup will be free for its dealer
network. " The volume is still very low, " he
said. " Our plan was to sign with Redwood
before we ramped up so we could learn
about what worked and what didn't. So
far, we're seeing mostly defective modules
replaced under warranty. Complete pack
replacements are likely to be kind of rare. "
Alexis Georgeson, VP of Communications
and Government
Relations at
Redwood said that the company is not
primarily a recycler. " Our core business is
creating anode and cathode material, " she
said. " We're not selling black mass; we're
using it as a feedstock for ourselves. "
Georgeson stresses the need for a
closed-loop domestic production process
that does not involve shipments to
Asia. " We're not solving the full equation
unless we keep our materials in the
country and start making cathodes here, "
she said. " The average metal atom travels
50,000 miles from the mine before
Key
Input
Process
Output
SUSTAINABLE RAW
MATERIALS
CAM precursor
CAM (NCA, NMC)
Redwood Materials considers itself more of a source for anode and cathode materials than a recycler. The company has partnerships and
agreements with Ford, Toyota, Volvo, Proterra, and Panasonic. (Image: Redwood Materials)
Battery & Electrification Technology, March 2023
19

Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2023