Keliber participates in a project aiming to develop and commercialize a new lithium ion battery recycling process.
The increase in the use of lithium ion batteries has been strong during the last two decades. Driver for the past rapid growth has been the use of mobile electronics. Further growth is expected and will be mainly driven by increasing demand of electric vehicles and stationary battery applications. Lithium ion batteries contain materials such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper, aluminium, graphite and special fluoride salts. As demand and use of these materials in lithium ion batteries increases, recycling of these valuable materials comes increasingly important.
Keliber is one of the industrial partners in project aiming to develop and commercialize new lithium ion battery recycling process that is suitable for the larger future volumes and have a much higher material recovery rate than today's state-of-the-art technology for recycling. Other industrial partners of the project are Norsk Hydro ASA as a project leader, AS Batteriretur and Glencore Nikkelverk AS. R&D partners for the project are Elkem AS Technology, IME RWTH Aachen (DE), MIMI Tech (DE), Agder University (UiA,MIL) and NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). Funding for the project is received from the Research Council of Norway.
“As a future lithium chemical supplier, with operations founded on sustainable development and social responsibility, we are interested about the life cycle of our products and the possibilities that new innovations can offer for recycling for the lithium ion battery materials. We are pleased to be part of international project consortium that has target in developing and commercializing new sustainable recycling process,” says Keliber’s Chief Production Officer Manu Myllymäki.