Recycling company Green Li-ion has announced the launch of its new commercial facility for producing sustainable, battery-grade materials – the first of its kind in North America. This facility, integrated into an existing recycling plant, will produce battery-grade cathode and anode materials from concentrated components of spent batteries.
In contrast to the conventional recycling process in North America, which involves a complex process chain—from sorting the batteries to further processing abroad, primarily in China and South Korea—Green Li-ion relies on an advanced hydrometallurgical process. This closes the recycling loop by converting recycled scrap directly into high-quality battery-grade cathode material (pCAM) without exporting it for further processing. Thanks to the local plant, Green Li-ion significantly reduces the production time to around 12 hours compared to conventional processes.
In addition to increasing efficiency, the Green Li-ion process also offers significant environmental benefits. It is said to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90 percent compared to producing new materials. In addition, Green Li-ion’s plant is the first of its kind on the continent to process the unsorted black mass of various lithium-ion battery chemistries into pCAM on a large scale, guaranteeing a 99 percent purity, Green Li-ion explains in the press release.
Source: https://www.greenli-ion.com/post/green-li-ion-launches-north-americas-first-commercial-scale-plant-to-produce-recycled-lithium-ion-engineered-battery-materials
