Metal Tech News - The Elements of Innovation Discovered

American Manganese Inc. Feb. 20 announced that its patented RecycLiCo process recovered up to 99.72% pure nickel-cobalt-manganese products generated from disassembled electric vehicle battery packs provided by a member of the U.S. Department of Energy Critical Materials Institute.

The idea behind RecycLiCo emerged as an evolution of American Manganese's research into an efficient means of recovering manganese metals from relatively low-grade mineralization at its Artillery Peak deposit in Arizona.

With that process patented, it occurred to the company that the same process may work for recovering metals from the cathodes of exhausted lithium-ion batteries, an area where there has been minimal success and the need is going to be high in the coming years.

More information on lithium-ion battery recycling can be read at A new horizon for battery recycling in the Feb. 19 edition of Metal Tech News.

In 2016, American Manganese contracted Kemetco Research Inc. to extend existing intellectual property on manganese recovery into recycling cathode materials from lithium-ion batteries.

American Manganese Inc.

With RecycLiCo, cathode scraps can be turned into aluminum foil, nickel-cobalt hydroxide and lithium carbonate. These materials can be reused to create new lithium-ion batteries.

Kemetco, a tech company that specializes in analytical chemistry and extractive metallurgy, successfully recovered 100 percent of cathode materials from a variety of lithium-ion battery types.

In the latest round of testing, Kemetco, generated recycled cathode products with purities of 98.91, 99.72 and 99.27%.

This testing is part of a partnership American Manganese has with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on a multi-year project that focuses on creating a circular economy for lithium-ion batteries.

DOE's Critical Materials Institute project – formally known as the "Lithium-Ion battery disassembly, remanufacturing, and lithium & cobalt recovery project" – focuses on research, development and demonstration of novel methods that maximize value recovery from lithium-ion battery stacks, modules and cells by reuse, remanufacturing, and materials recovery.