By Li-Cycle
Li-Cycle, an industry leader in lithium-ion battery resource recovery and the largest lithium-ion battery recycler in North America, has announced it will build its third commercial lithium-ion battery recycling facility in Gilbert.
When complete, Li-Cycle’s “Spoke 3” facility will be capable of processing up to 10,000 tons of end-of-life batteries and battery manufacturing scrap per year, bringing Li-Cycle’s total recycling capacity to 20,000 tons per year. The construction of Spoke 3 builds on Li-Cycle’s existing North American Spokes, located in Rochester, New York and Kingston, Ontario, and is part of Li-Cycle’s strategic roadmap to construct twenty Spokes globally over the next five years.
The Phoenix metropolitan area is strategically located close to Li-Cycle’s existing battery supply network, as well as being at the nexus of where there will be continued growth in the quantity of lithium-ion batteries available for recycling.
Li-Cycle’s Spokes convert battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries into intermediate products, including “black mass”, a powder substance which contains a variety of metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. The Spokes will supply black mass to Li-Cycle’s future North American Hub, which is currently in late-stage development in Rochester, New York. The North American Hub will process black mass through a hydrometallurgical circuit to produce critical, battery-grade materials, including lithium carbonate, cobalt sulphate and nickel sulphate, as well as other recycled materials that can be returned to the economy. Li-Cycle’s patented Spoke & Hub Technologies™ minimize the overall environmental footprint of the end-to-end resource recovery process, and substantially reduce the intensity of GHG emissions that would otherwise be produced from mining these finite resources. (Source)