Company Produces High-Purity Lithium Hydroxide from Used EV Batteries

­The battery recycling startup Cylib has hit a breakthrough in curbing e-waste, producing high-purity lithium hydroxide from used EV batteries.

With the exponential increase in batteries necessary for the voluminous devices making up the Internet of Things, we’ve a potential environmental disaster on the horizon – that is, if we can’t figure out a responsible (and productive) way to either dispose of, or better yet, recycle, those batteries.

We’d previously discussed LG and Toyota’s plans to open a battery recycling plant in America, along with Chinese researchers developing a method to extract nearly 100% of critical materials in used Li-Ion batteries.

Cylib, meanwhile, in conjunction with Belgian materials company Syensqo, has managed to produce high-purity lithium hydroxide from used EV batteries, which can serve as cathode active material (CAM) for new batteries.

According to Cylib, the achievement enables “the extraction and purification of lithium from shredded battery electrodes, known as black mass, from different battery chemistries, such as NMC (nickel-manganese-cobalt) and LFP (lithium-iron-phosphate), on a single operating line,” and they noted that few recycling companies today can produce lithium at battery-grade (especially lithium hydroxide).

The water-based process to recover said lithium and graphite also apparently is in-line with EU objectives for lithium recovery in battery recycling – specifically, the Battery Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, wherein recyclers must recover at least 50% of the lithium content in battery waste by the end of 2027, and no less than 80% by the end of 2031.