Lithium-ion Battery Refinery Planned for Rochester, N.Y.

The wet chemistry/hydrometallurgical facility will refine battery-grade materials such as cobalt, nickel, and lithium from spent Li-ion batteries, Li-Cycle says. A nearby preprocessing “spoke” facility, which it says will be operational later this year, will produce an anode and cathode active materials, or “black mass,” from which it will refine the metals.

The facility aims to be the world’s first commercial facility to produce battery-grade lithium chemicals from spent Li-ion batteries and North America’s first source of battery-grade lithium carbonate. The facility will have the capacity to process 60,000 mt of spent li-ion batteries, which is roughly equivalent to 120,000 electric vehicle battery packs.

Li-Cycle previously ran a demonstration Hub in Kingston, Ontario, to determine how to design and build the hub in Rochester. Construction of the Rochester facility will start in 2021, and it expects the facility to be fully operational in 2022, it says. Visit www.li-cycle.com.