ES Recycle recovers up to 91% of materials from battery scrap and upcycles them to high purity, battery ready materials.
Our Process
Innovative process chain for recycling lithium-ion batteries
ES Recycle uses an innovative patented process specifically developed for lithium-ion batteries; it uses a combination of mechanical process and hydrometallurgy. It also eliminates high-temperature processes, which enables comprehensive closed loop recycling and the production of battery use grade materials.
Mechanical Processing
The mechanical treatment of lithium-ion batteries with conventional methods is challenging because of flammable electrolytes and dangerous products. The process used by ES Recycle is safe and has been developed to eliminate the specific hazards of this stage of recycling.
After discharge and disassembly, the batteries are comminuted under an inert gas atmosphere and the solvent of the electrolyte is recovered from the comminuted material by vacuum distillation. A low process temperature prevents the formation of toxic gases, so no exhaust gas scrubbing is necessary. The separated solvent is then sent off for further processing.
The dried shredded material is separated into different material fractions of the basis of physical properties such as grain size, density, magnetic and electrical properties which will be further process metallurgically. The iron, copper, and aluminum fractions are added to previous recycling measures. To process the “black mass”, which contains the electrode active materials and the conductive salt, this is then transferred to the next stage of the recycling process: hydrometallurgy.
Hydrometallurgy
Currently, in most industrial hydrometallurgical processes used for black mass, only cobalt and nickel are recovered. Lithium, manganese and graphite are lost in these processes and are thus unable to be recycled and repurposed in the material cycle. However, with our patented technology all of these metals are able to be recovered.
With this patented hydrometallurgical process, graphite, lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese are separated from the black mass and able to be reused as battery grade materials. This is done by removing the fluoride before leaching, which prevents the formation of hydrogen fluoride the byproduct that normally prevents metal extraction in normal wet chemical processing.