Canada’s Li-Cycle says 100% recycling commercially achievable for Li-ion batteries, including cobalt

June 6, 2019
LinkedIn
Twitter
Reddit
Facebook
Email
Cobalt cathode. Cobalt is one of the ‘main revenue drivers’ as well as one of the key sources of supply chain controversy. Image: wikimedia user Jurii.

A new two-step process implemented at commercial demonstration level by Li-Cycle, a company from Canada founded just three years ago, can achieve a recycling rate of 80% to 100% of materials in lithium-ion batteries, the company claims.

Energy-Storage.news spoke with Li-Cycle’s Kunal Phalpher, who said that many other recycling processes used in Europe and by Chinese battery companies is based around pyrometallurgy i.e. smelting down of battery components – only end up with 30% – 40% material recovery from lithium batteries.

The art of shredding

Li-Cycle’s two phase process involves firstly toe “mechanically size reduce” batteries. Shredding them, removing plastic and metals, “you end up with the shredded metal of the electrode material, where the value is,” Phalpher said.

This article requires Premium SubscriptionBasic (FREE) Subscription

Enjoy 12 months of exclusive analysis

Not ready to commit yet?
  • Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
  • In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
  • Annual digital subscription to the PV Tech Power journal
  • Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual

Or continue reading this article for free

The shredding can even be done on charged batteries, meaning that labour and Opex are not spent on discharging batteries before they can be sent from the customer to Li-Cycle’s facility. The process is also chemistry-agnostic.

“Other processes require like chemistries to be used, additionally, cathode to cathode requires the same cathode type and is only functional for a single cathode type. So we’re flexible in terms of types of cells, we can actually put everything up to a module, so if it’s an energy storage rack module or an automotive module we can put that right in the process. That provides a lot of benefits to our customers,” Phalpher said.

The second step in recycling through the company’s initial ‘commercial demonstrator’ facility is a hydrometallurgy, wet chemistry process.

“That [second step] takes that shredded metal and one-by-one removes the valuable components, so lithium carbonate, lithium, cobalt, copper, aluminium, graphite, iron in the case of iron phosphate.

Phalpher referred to existing facilities: “They use a pyrometallurgy process where they don’t actually recover the lithium.”

As before, EVs and portable electronics will go first

Clearly, the impetus to recycle is already felt more keenly in the portable electronics space and in electric vehicles (EVs), both markets where Li-Cycle is already actively targeting and both which feature higher percentages of valuable – and potentially problematically sourced – cobalt per device. Stationary energy storage is, meanwhile, a fairly newly deployed technology and not many systems have been long enough in the field to reach anything near end-of-life. Nonetheless, supply chain issues will be felt already by some ESS manufacturers and this is only likely to amplify in future, particularly for those companies using chemistries reliant on cobalt.

“The most interesting elements people are after are cobalt, nickel and lithium and to a certain extent copper has a high value. Those are the revenue drivers, on that end of the process,” Phalpher said, adding that Li-Cycle already advertises total recovery rates of 80% to 100%. Fortum, an energy services company owned by the state of Finland claimed recently to be able to recycle 80% of a device, again using a hydrometallurgical process. This came with huge, associated emissions-reduction benefits, Fortum claimed.

Li-Cycle has a capacity of 5,000 tonnes on the shredding side at its facility in Canada but still needs to scale-up the second part of the process to reach full scale. Phalper said that the company has already hosted discussions with a number of companies servicing or directly active in the manufacture of stationary energy storage systems. This has often been with a view to looking at the projected costs of recycling and recovery in 10 years time for inclusion in ESS project business plans, Phalper said.

7 June 2019. This article has been amended from its original form to reflect the intent of the interviewee. The headline has been amended for accuracy.

Read Next

Premium
October 21, 2025
Quebec-based IPP Boralex has received the green light from local authorities to move forward with a 125MWh/500MWh BESS located in Oxford County, Ontario. 
October 21, 2025
Developer Eku Energy has submitted its 400MW/1,600MWh Monduran battery energy storage system (BESS) project for environmental assessment under Australia’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
October 20, 2025
Production has begun at a battery energy storage system (BESS) factory designated as a project of strategic importance by the European Commission (EC) due to its use of local supply chains.
October 17, 2025
Powerlink Queensland is seeking federal approval for transmission infrastructure connecting AGL Energy’s 2,000MWh Tuckeroo battery energy storage system (BESS) to the Western Downs Substation in Australia.
Premium
October 7, 2025
Energy-Storage.news Premium hears from a representative from Honeywell and Alejandro Schnakofsky, CTO of Prevalon, on fire safety in the battery energy storage system (BESS) industry.

Most Popular

Email Newsletter