Since July 2022 significant progress has been made at our newly established facility in Devon, UK and the new process engineering team will move to the facility start January 2023. The new facility has been equipped with analytical and hydrometallurgical laboratory, plus a demonstration line to progress the scale-up of the Altilitech process. Commissioning of the demonstration line is expected early January 2023, and first recycled critical metals produced by the end of January.
Altilium Metals has developed the Altilitech “direct to CAM” process where old EV batteries can be recycled to recover critical metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. The aim is to return valuable raw materials to the manufacturing process chain direct as cathode ready material in the most environmentally friendly way to save costs and preserve raw materials.
In 2022, the company was awarded grants of over £3 million from Devon County Council and the UK Government’s Innovate and Automotive Transformation Fund to demonstrate and scale-up its recycling technology.
In November 2022 the Innovation Centre was awarded a permit from the Environment Agency to recycle EV battery black mass at the “metric ton” scale, in a UK first.
The demonstration line gives the operational capability to allow research on a hybrid feed of battery waste including LCO, NMC and LFP chemistries as well as primary raw materials feeds of MHP. The scale-up processing line will allow us to attain data to make informed decisions on materials handling, scalability and product quality at our planned UK Mega-Recycling plant being designed in conjunction with Hatch capable of recycling battery waste from 150,000 EVs per annum.
An EV battery recycling industry in the UK is crucial to ensure a supply of indigenously sourced metals that will be vital for the UK’s electrified automotive supply chain and it’s energy security.
