Momentum Technologies Inc., a Dallas, Texas-based materials science company that is focused on extracting critical metals from electronic waste, has licensed an Oak Ridge National Laboratory process for recovering cobalt and other metals from spent lithium-ion batteries.
Less than 5% of spent lithium-ion batteries in the United States are recycled. Several critical elements are used in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles, such as cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese. Using the Membrane Solvent Extraction process, or MSX, developed by ORNL scientists as part of the Department of Energy’s Critical Materials Institute, or CMI, these elements can be recovered in a highly pure form that can be reformulated into battery composition for new devices.
After removing recyclable plastics and metals from end-of-life batteries, a sludgy mix of mostly lithium-ion battery elements known as “black mass” is left.
“Half of the costs in lithium-ion battery recycling are in the logistics of shipping that material to processors,” said Preston Bryant, founder and CEO of Momentum. “The MSX breakthrough allows us to build processing plants at the sources of the waste, eliminating logistics hurdles while increasing material recovery rates as compared to traditional smelters.”
Ramesh Bhave, ORNL senior researcher and project leader for membrane-based rare earth elements separation supported by CMI, led the development of the MSX technology. His team includes post-doctoral researchers Syed Islam and Priyesh Wagh.
The research that developed this technology is part of CMI efforts in Driving Reuse and Recycling. Ramesh Bhave leads the CMI project "Separation and Recovery of Dysprosium and Cobalt from E-Waste" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
See the full story here: Process to recover metals from batteries licensed by Momentum Technologies