Neometals has announced the successful commissioning of stage 1 of its lithium‐ion battery (LIB) recycling pilot plant in Canada.
Image: Neometals starts lithium battery recycling pilot plant in Canada. Photo courtesy of Neometals Ltd.
SGS Canada (SGS) was awarded the contracts to construct and operate the Pilot in its fully accredited Lakefield facility. The SGS Lakefield facility is recognised worldwide for housing pre‐eminent expertise in the development, optimisation and piloting of mineral processing and chemical extraction processes.
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.
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 alsoprovide 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 (FID).
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”.
Source: Company Press Release