US battery materials producer Princeton NuEnergy (PNE) will recycle manufacturing scrap from SK Battery America's (SKBA) plants in Commerce, Georgia, extending their partnership on closed-loop recycling.
PNE is considering building a recycling plant near the SKBA site to process the scrap, using its cathode-to-cathode process, so that battery manufacturing scrap can be reused in cell manufacturing.
Conventional recycling breaks down cathode material into its individual elements. PNE's process is designed to keep the cathode's engineered structure intact and rejuvenate it.
Its direct recycling process recovers 95pc of critical minerals and costs over 45pc less than mining, pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical recycling methods, according to the company.
PNE was recently awarded up to $50mn from the US Department of Energy for a proposed $110mn cathode-to-cathode facility in the US. The facility is expected to have an initial capacity of 3,000 metric tonnes (t)/yr, potentially expanding to 30,000 t/yr by 2035.
SKBA, a subsidiary of South Korea's SK On, operates electric vehicle battery plants in Commerce with a combined capacity of about 22 GWh/yr. It has invested around $2.6bn in the sites.
