The battery recycling company has been around for 25 years.
(Photo: Accurec)
Dusseldorf It doesn’t matter whether it’s an electric car, smartphone, tablet or Bluetooth headphones – lithium is in all these products and is likely to become one of the most sought-after raw materials in the world in the coming years. However, experts have been warning of a gap for a long time: it is simply not possible to produce as much lithium as will be needed in the near future.
The recycling company Accurec from North Rhine-Westphalia has now developed a process with which it can recover the light metal from old batteries. This would make the Krefeld company the first in Europe to recycle lithium on an industrial scale.
“So far, recovery has only taken place in Asia,” says Managing Director Reiner Sojka in an interview with the Handelsblatt. Using a specially developed hydrometallurgical process, Sojka intends to extract the raw material from used batteries from electric cars, e-bikes, electronic devices and conventional household batteries.
Lithium gap: By 2030 there is a risk of severe undersupply
The plant is scheduled to go into operation in the spring. “We are adapting our entire procedural process chain with a focus on lithium recovery,” explains Sojka, who co-founded the company in 1996. With the new technology, Accurec could close at least a small part of the projected lithium gap.
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According to various scenarios from the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), lithium demand will grow between 316,000 and more than 550,000 tons per year over the next eight years. 90 percent of the processed raw material then flows into lithium-ion batteries for electric cars.
>> Read here: Lithium for electric car batteries is becoming scarce
According to BGR experts, in the worst case scenario, there will be a shortage of 300,000 tons of lithium per year in 2030. In the best case, it would still be 90,000 tons – as much as is currently produced per year.
lithium gap
300,000
metric tons
could, in the worst case, be missing per year in 2030 according to estimates by the BGR experts.
Although the problem has now also been recognized in Germany, the recovery of lithium is still in its infancy in this country, say experts such as Jörg Zimmermann from the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Cycles and Resource Strategy: “The focus in Germany is not yet on the recovery of lithium, but on the valuable metals cobalt and nickel,” explains the scientist. There is definitely still room for improvement when it comes to recycling.
In its new facility, Accurec will be able to recycle the lithium from 4,000 tons of old batteries per year. According to the company, half of the metal in these batteries can be recovered with the newly developed process. “We can increase this to 80 percent in the future,” says Sojka.
The process itself sounds quite simple: first the used batteries are sorted, then thermally treated under the influence of heat and mechanically processed. Here the mass of steel, aluminum and copper is separated. What is left is called black mass. Many processes have ended here after the extraction of nickel and cobalt. At Accurec, the mass is now treated using a hydrometallurgical process, the lithium is sort of washed out.
The car companies need lithium for their electrical strategies.
(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
In the end, the three strategically most important metals for the production of lithium-ion batteries – for example for electric cars – remain with nickel, cobalt and lithium. “We achieve a degree of purity of between 98 and 99 percent with the recycled lithium,” says Sojka. For use in a battery, the degree of purity must be increased somewhat. According to Sojka, this is something that lithium producers such as SQM or Albermale could also take on.
Car manufacturers plan their own recycling
Even if Accurec only produces small quantities and the Krefeld company does not yet have a purchase agreement, the manager is convinced: “When we talk about strategic metals for our traffic turnaround, we also have to talk about the recovery of strategic metals in domestic industry .”
Companies from China, the USA and Australia are leaders in the lithium mining and processing market – but not from Europe. With their electric strategy, car companies such as Volkswagen or Mercedes-Benz have a high demand for the scarce raw material.
The focus in Germany is not yet on the recovery of lithium, but on the valuable metals cobalt and nickel. Jörg Zimmermann, Fraunhofer Institute for Material Cycles and Resource Strategy
Instead of just buying into mines for a lot of money, experts therefore advise recovering the substances from the used batteries. The head of the European battery cell conglomerate Automotive Cell Company, Yann Vincent, says recycling is “the new mine”. More than 95 percent of the key raw materials could be recycled from cells already produced.
>> Read also: Supply chain risk – How the lack of raw materials is slowing down the German auto industry
The car manufacturers are therefore also planning huge recycling plants in addition to their battery plants. However, they are not finished yet. VW, for example, has only operated a pilot plant in Salzgitter so far. In addition, the electric car batteries last longer than expected. “That’s why the main part of recycled strategic metals will not come from e-mobility by 2030, but from household batteries,” says Accurec boss Sojka.
The medium-sized company from North Rhine-Westphalia still has a bit of an advantage. But industry giants like Belgian materials technology group Umicore and chemicals giant BASF are also planning lithium recovery plants.
More: Curious decline in electric cars and plug-in hybrids.
