Eramet confirms major progress for its electric battery recycling project

(Boursier.com) — The group Eramet announces that its lithium-ion battery recycling project has taken a new key step towards its industrialization in France. The project has thus successfully demonstrated its ability to recycle in a closed loop all the valuable metals contained in lithium-ion batteries with very high yields, adapted to the requirements of future European regulations.

At the start of 2022, Eramet decided to launch industrialization studies for an integrated recycling solution, from the dismantling of batteries to the production of nickel, cobalt and lithium salts suitable for the manufacture of new batteries.

In the first stages of recycling, Eramet and Suez have decided to strengthen their cooperation by signing a new partnership agreement last February to launch the pre-industrial phase for the development of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles. According to the conclusions of this pre-industrial phase, Eramet and Suez plan to build in France, by 2024, a lithium-ion battery recycling plant for the production of black mass, a concentrate of metals (nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium, graphite) suitable for hydrometallurgical refining steps.

For the refining stage, Eramet is undertaking the construction of a pre-industrial demonstrator within its research and innovation center, an essential stage in preparing for the commercial phase. This demonstrator will make it possible to optimize the efficiency of the recycling process and to take into account the requirements of future customers and partners, thanks to the group’s know-how in extraction process engineering and its operational expertise in hydrometallurgy.

Eramet and Suez are continuing to assess the best options for the sites for setting up this new recycling activity in France. On the basis of these new advances and if the economic conditions are met, an entry into the industrial phase could take place as early as 2024 on the upstream stage of blackmass production and by 2025-2026 for the stage of refining blackmass into products. for batteries.

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