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Neometals begins commissioning LIB recycling pilot plant in Canada

| By Mary Bailey

A simplified diagram showing Neometals’ LIB recycling process Source: Neometals

Neometals Ltd. (West Perth, Australia; www.neometals.com) announced the successful commissioning of stage 1 of its lithium‐ion battery (LIB) recycling pilot plant in Canada. SGS Canada Inc. was awarded the contracts to construct and operate the Pilot in its fully accredited Lakefield facility.

SGS has been engaged by Neometals to undertake Pilot front‐end feed preparation (shredding, removal of metal casings and plastics) (Stage 1) and the subsequent hydrometallurgical processing and refining stage to deliver high‐purity battery materials for market qualification (Stage 2).

The Pilot is intended to demonstrate and showcase Neometals’ mixed-feed flowsheet which can accommodate a variety of LIB types from multiple sources including consumer electronics, electric vehicle batteries and the emerging stationary storage sector. The Pilot aims to verify assumptions made at bench scale, it will generate marketing samples of products and will also provide essential data required for a front‐end engineering design study (FEED). The proposed FEED study will support a subsequent feasibility study and enable consideration of an investment decision on a commercial plant.

Neometals Managing Director Chris Reed said: “We are delighted to see our battery recycling project back on track. The commissioning of the Pilot represents a significant milestone and marks the culmination of extensive research and development into a flowsheet to process multiple battery chemistries, from consumer electronics to electric vehicle applications.  With ever increasing volumes of commercial LIBs reaching their end of life, we are focussed on proving at scale, then qualifying our scale‐able and modular recycling solution with industry as early as possible. The Pilot will serve as a showcase facility for potential partners as well as provide strong independent data for future engineering and financial studies”.

Despite regions like the European Unionbeing heavily regulated under battery recycling compliance schemes, it is estimated that only approximately 5% of LIBs are currently recycled globally. Worldwide regulation is however tightening at a very fast pace. Regulations coupled with corporate requirements for ethical sourcing and disposal of LIBs has created a considerable opportunity for Neometals to recover critical/non‐renewable resources while reducing environmental impacts associated with battery disposal.

Neometals has developed a process flowsheet to recover >90% of all battery materials (plus recycle water and minimize plastic and graphite waste) from targeted end of life LIBs that could otherwise find their way to land fill or inefficient base metal recovery circuits. Neometals’ process flowsheet targets the recovery of cobalt from consumer electronic batteries (devices with lithium cobalt oxide cathodes (LCO), as well as nickel‐rich EV and stationary storage battery chemistries (lithium‐nickel‐ manganese‐cobalt (NMC) cathodes). This mixed-feed flowsheet is the subject of the Pilot.