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Pilot project: Li-Cycle recycles New Flyer bus batteries

New Flyer has completed a pilot project for recycling batteries from e-buses with the company Li-Cycle. The bus manufacturer supplied Li-Cycle with 45 used battery modules, which were converted into so-called black mass in order to recover materials such as nickel and cobalt.

The pilot project was the Canadian recycling specialist’s first program in the field of heavy commercial vehicles. The discarded battery modules weighed 1,450 kilograms and were recycled in a Li-Cycle demonstration facility. An accompanying message from New Flyer does not reveal what quantities of materials from the mass could be reused. It only states in general that Li-Cycles patented technology allows the recovery of 95 percent of all lithium-ion battery materials.

“When our customers move to zero-emission mobility, they are doing so with a focus on sustainability from cradle to grave,” said Chris Stoddart, President of New Flyer. The demand for battery recycling is growing and, given the pilot project with Li-Cycle, we are optimistic that we will be able to offer battery recycling in the future.

Li-Cycle plans to complete a large battery recycling facility in the US in 2022, with an annual capacity that will be sufficient to recycle materials from around 120,000 EV battery packs. The company announced in September 2020 that it would invest more than $ 175 million in the Rochester, New York facility. Construction is scheduled to begin this year. Specifically, Li-Cycle wants to refine battery-compatible materials from components of old batteries in the plant. The main focus is on cobalt, nickel and lithium.

Li-Cycle describes its recycling approach as a two-stage process using mechanical and hydrometallurgical or wet-chemical processes. With this approach one is able to recycle all variants of the cathode and anode chemistry within the lithium-ion spectrum without having to sort them according to certain chemicals, according to the Canadians. By the end of 2020, the company plans to complete a facility in Rochester that will preprocess old lithium-ion batteries.

In Kingston, Canada, Li-Cycle already has the said demonstration plant in operation. It was through them that the company determined the “most important design criteria for the construction of the first commercial hub” in the USA. In March 2020, the recycling specialist announced that it had completed its first commercial delivery of recycled battery materials in demonstration operation there.
newflyer.com

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