Finnish innovation boosts EV battery recycling rate to over 80%

(Climate Action, 25 Mar 2019) The Finnish innovation will see battery recycling rates boosted to over 80 per cent.

Nordic clean energy company Fortum have perfected a new innovation technique to boost EV recycling rates by over 80 per cent.

To do this, they use a low CO2- hydrometallurgical recycling process. First, the batteries are made safe for mechanical treatment, with plastics, aluminium and copper separated and directed to their own recycling process.

Present recycling solutions for EV batteries are not able to recover these scarce metals. To combat this, Fortum has a unique recovery process, involving chemical precipitation methodology that allows these minerals to be recovered and delivered to battery manufacturers to be reused in producing new batteries.

“There are very few working, economically viable technologies for recycling the majority of materials used in lithium-ion batteries. We saw a challenge that was not yet solved and developed a scalable recycling solution for all industries using batteries,” says Kalle Saarimaa, Vice President at Fortum Recycling and Waste.

The demand for electric vehicles is forecasted to skyrocket over the next few decades, with the International Energy Agency predicting a rise of over 100 million new electric cars on the road by 2030.

If these predictions are true, it would mean an 800 per cent increase in the demand for nickel and manganese and a 150 per cent increase in the demand for cobalt for the production of new batteries.

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Climate Action, 25 Mar 2019: Finnish innovation boosts EV battery recycling rate to over 80%