Australian battery material maker Neometals said its Primobius joint venture has successfully produced battery-grade nickel sulfate from lithium-ion battery recycling.
The company believes that this development, which utilizes Primobius' patented technology, has an immeasurable impact on sustainability by recycling expired batteries whose components remain largely unchanged and can be recycled and converted into new batteries. The results confirm Primobius' ability to produce high-quality battery-grade nickel sulfate and validate products previously produced in a 2019 pilot trial in Canada.
It also supports the potential global market sale of Primobius' scalable recycling plant module, which is to be built by its partner, Siemag Group, a leading German project company and plant builder. These modules are expected to be available under a technology license agreement.
Nickel sulfate accounts for the largest proportion by volume of any single battery material recycled from nickel-mang-cobalt lithium-ion batteries, a popular electric vehicle battery chemical in Europe, which also constitutes the largest source of by-product revenue. This is also the case with the Primobius process, which makes nickel a major factor in reducing the operating costs of lithium cogeneration as much as possible.
The technology is based on a two-stage process in which lithium, nickel and cobalt, along with other trace components, are recovered and then refined into battery-compatible materials needed to produce new lithium-ion batteries.
Primobius is an equally owned joint venture between Neometals and global equipment manufacturer SMS, which is present in almost every country in the world. The company was founded by the partners with the aim of co-financing the commercial production of the owned plant for lithium-ion battery recycling technology originally developed by Neometals.
The company recently revealed that it has received an order from Mercedes-Benz to buy a 10-tonn-per-day mechanical lithium-ion battery shredding plant that will include a feeder "spoke" for its new battery recycling business in Germany.
The Australian Patent Office also recently granted Primobius timely protection for the key wet gold separation "centre" of its Li-ion battery recycling process, which constitutes a second order for Mercedes to become a downstream component of the "spoke" plant.
The two combined Mercedes orders represent an important milestone for Primobius, as they constitute the joint venture's first commercial recycling plant supply agreement with a global electric vehicle manufacturer and its first significant revenue.
Neometals sees the supply to Mercedes as a strong validation of the Primbius technology's ability to meet the needs of global manufacturers and the broader automotive industry.
