LG and General Motors’ (GM’s) joint venture, Ultium Cells is collaborating with Li-Cycle to recycle all the material scrap of batteries.
Under the agreement, Ultium will be able to reprocess battery materials such as copper, aluminum, manganese, cobalt, lithium, and graphite and will feed the recycled materials back to the market to create new batteries, the company indicated in a statement this week. The process is expected to begin in the second half of this year.
Carbon emissions in this process are expected to be 30pc lower than traditional recycling. According to Ken Morris, vice president of electric and autonomous vehicles at GM, the process is part of GM’s goal to recycle at least 90pc of all its manufacturing waste that would otherwise go to landfills or incinerators, in the next four years.
Ajay Kochhar, president, chief executive officer, and co-founder of Li-Cycles said that the process would help in returning a significant amount of materials back into the battery-making supply chain in the US, though he did not disclose the exact volumes that the company expected to recycle through this partnership.
GM and LG have invested a total of $2.3bn in Ultium with its Lordstown, Ohio facility that is currently under construction, expected to be capable of producing around 30 GWh of EV batteries with capabilities to expand its production.