With the energy transition firmly underway, demand for battery minerals is estimated to soar over the next few decades.

However, the International Energy Agency estimates the projects announced so far can only meet 70% of copper and 50% of lithium requirements in 2035, if countries worldwide are to meet their national climate goals.

Meanwhile, many countries are sitting on piles of electronic waste that are only going to get bigger as new technologies such as electric vehicles reach their end of life. The US alone is forecast to have installed 200 gigawatthours of batteries as energy storage by 2030, when 60% of new passenger vehicles sold in the country will be plug-ins or hybrids. In all of this, recycling offers a major circular economy opportunity to recover crucial materials to make new batteries, providing environmental and cost savings.

Kallanish has interviewed Mike O’Kronley, ceo of Ascend Elements, a US company focused on reclaiming minerals from discarded lithium-ion batteries.

 

➡️ How does your technology work?

Beyond simply recovering valuable materials from batteries, Ascend Elements combines battery shredding operations with a patented hydrometallurgical process Hydro-to-Cathode to produce decarbonised cathode precursor (pCAM) and cathode active material (CAM) at a commercial scale. The patented Hydro-to-Cathode direct precursor synthesis process eliminates several intermediary steps in the traditional cathode manufacturing process and provides significant economic and carbon-reduction benefits.

With our patented process, we can recover 98% of the critical metals and over 99% of the total mass. It’s a very efficient and clean process. Instead of extracting individual metals from black mass, we extract impurities from the black mass and produce a mixed metal solution. Then, we can adjust the elemental ratio of nickel, manganese and cobalt in the solution and precipitate the precursor from it.

The finished product is pCAM or we can add lithium and sinter it for CAM. All of the impurities, such as copper, aluminium and iron, are recovered and recycled. We also recover lithium carbonate and graphite during the process.

 

➡️ How does it compare to other technologies available in the market?

Developed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, our innovative Hydro-to-Cathode technology is the world’s most efficient lithium-ion battery recycling process. The key to our efficiency and reduced carbon emissions is: direct precursor synthesis. Rather than extracting individual metals in series (first lithium, then nickel, then cobalt), our process extracts impurities from the combined metals and allows us to adjust the elemental composition to produce any type of cathode precursor (pCAM) or cathode active material (CAM) specified a customer.

This technology is purpose-built for lithium-ion battery recycling, not a repurposing of a legacy technology originally meant for other applications. A life cycle assessment of Ascend Elements’ Hydroto-Cathode material shows a 49% reduction in carbon emissions today compared to traditional cathode material made with primary materials from mining. By 2030, Ascend Elements’ decarbonisation efforts will achieve a 90% lower carbon footprint compared to traditional cathode material.

 

➡️ How much money have you raised so far and who are your investors?

To date, we have raised over $1.6 billion to fund the commercialisation of our Hydro-to-Cathode technology. We have many investors including strategic partners such as Jaguar Land Rover, Orbia, Temasek, Hitachi Ventures, TDK Ventures and SK Ecoplant as well as climate technology investors like Fifth Wall, Decarbonization Partners, and Just Climate. Several sovereign wealth funds are also investing in Ascend Elements, including the Oman Investment Authority and Qatar Investment Authority. Additionally, the US Department of Energy is funding our Apex 1 project with $480 million in non-dilutive grants.

 

➡️ In what countries do you operate?

We are based in the US and have locations in Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan and Massachusetts. We also have teams in South Korea, China, the UK and Poland. We recently launched a joint venture with Elemental Strategic Metals in Poland, which we call AE Elemental. The JV will operate a recycling facility in Zawiercie, Poland and another under construction in central Germany.

 

➡️ What companies do you collaborate with?

On the recycling side, we work with almost every major electric vehicle OEM in North America to recycle end-of-life batteries and recalled batteries. Honda is a good example of this. We also work with EV battery manufacturers like SK Battery America to recycle gigafactory production scrap. Scrap is a significant amount of what’s available to recycle today.

On the sustainable materials side of our business, we sell engineered cathode materials made from recycled metals directly to EV makers and battery manufacturers. Last year we signed a $1 billion contracted sale of sustainable pCAM for delivery to a US-based EV battery manufacturer in early 2025.

 

➡️ What are your plans for the joint venture with Elemental Strategic Metals in Poland and Germany?

We will operate a large EV battery recycling facility, which is already built and ready to go, in Zawiercie, Poland. The facility has capacity to recycle up to 12,000 tonnes of used batteries per year. That’s about 28,000 EV battery packs per year. In addition to shredding batteries into black mass, we will build large-scale lithium extraction capabilities to process up to 20,000 tonnes of black mass per year at the Zawiercie facility.

Construction of the lithium extraction capabilities will begin in fall 2024 with operations planned to begin in 2026. The JV will also build a new, state-of-the-art EV battery recycling facility in Wernigerode, Germany. The AE Elemental facility in Germany will have the capacity to recycle up to 25,000 tonnes of batteries per year, or approximately 58,000 EVs annually.

 

➡️ Can you tell us more about the decision to develop a complex logistics simulation model with EY US?

As you can imagine, a project of the size and scope of our Apex 1 facility requires a lot of logistics planning. EY US is using its experience and insight to help us anticipate logistical challenges and optimise our operations to achieve world-class efficiency and minimal impact on the community. We had a lot of questions about traffic flow and timing that the simulation helped us understand. How many trucks can the site accommodate at one time? Will trucks have room to queue up onsite without creating unnecessary traffic on local roads? How long will it take to load and unload each truck? Do we need to take deliveries 24 hours a day, or can we load and unload in the daytime only? Understanding the answers to these questions is essential to plan for optimal efficiency and safety.

The Apex facility will receive truckloads of recycled battery feedstock every day and ship over 450 tonnes of new, sustainable pCAM materials per week. The EY US logistics model can run simulations under many different scenarios to determine the most efficient way to operate the plant and manage traffic flow.

 

➡️ What differences are you noticing between the North American and European markets?

The European EV market is about twice the size of the US market today. From a strategic perspective, it’s essential to be in Europe because that’s where the end of life EV batteries will be in a few years. Already there is significant manufacturing scrap material available in Europe and in the US for that matter. Expanding into Europe allows us to better service our customers there locally and to help the European EV industry comply with new EU rules requiring recycled material in new batteries. That’s the other big difference. The EU is mandating recycled materials in new batteries while the US is incentivising it with the IRA tax credits.

 

➡️ How do you think the global battery recycling market will develop in the near term?

Right now, the battery recycling industry is focused primarily on recycling battery manufacturing scrap. Currently, the ratio is about 70/30 – with about 70% of the material available to be recycled coming from gigafactory production scrap vs. end-of-life batteries. But that ratio will flip in the next 10 years or so with 70% of available material coming from end-of-life batteries and 30% coming from scrap. Every battery manufacturing facility needs a battery recycling facility to process scrap material.

That’s happening now. But, in the near future, we will need even more recycling facilities to process the wave of end-of-life lithium-ion batteries we expect to see by the 2030s. Some analysts predict over 1 million tons of lithium-ion batteries will reach the end of life each year in the US and Europe by 2034. We need to have recycling facilities online and optimised for high-capacity recycling by then.

 

➡️ Does the recycling process lower the quality of the end product?

When people hear about recycled materials, they think of recycled paper and plastic, which are usually inferior in quality, but engineered battery materials made from recycled metals are as good or better than comparable materials made with virgin metals. There is no performance penalty for using recycled battery materials in new EV batteries. Several peer-reviewed studies have shown Ascend Elements’ recycled battery materials perform as well as similar materials made from primary or mined sources.