American Battery Technology Company (ABTC), an American critical battery materials company that is commercializing both its primary minerals manufacturing and secondary minerals lithium-ion battery recycling technologies, has been awarded a $10M additional competitive grant under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to demonstrate and commercialize next generation techniques for its lithium-ion battery recycling processes to produce low-cost and low-environmental impact domestic battery materials.
“Similar to the continuous development required of advanced lithium-ion battery technologies, the recycling of these batteries requires rigorous continuous improvement, optimization, and commercialization efforts in order to advance the forefront of global innovation of these technologies,” stated ABTC chief executive officer Ryan Melsert. “We are excited to work with our diverse array of world class partners throughout the private industry, public university, and government laboratory sectors in order to optimize and commercialize these next generation of low-cost, low-environmental impact, and domestically implemented advanced techniques.”
As one of five companies selected for competitive funding under the battery recycling portion of the ‘Electric Drive Vehicle Battery Recycling and Second Life Applications’ opportunity from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), ABTC, and its partners, were awarded close to $10 million to validate, test, and deploy three disruptive advanced separation and processing technologies in its existing lithium-ion battery recycling Pilot Plant to further enhance the economic competitiveness, reduce environmental impact, and re-integrate an even greater percentage of the constituent components to the domestic battery manufacturing market. ABTC will work in partnership with Novonix Group, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Utah, North Carolina State University, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, and ABTC will rely on Dainen Material and Novonix Group for additional downstream material validation. The company and its project partners will contribute an additional $10 million in cost-share resources, bringing the total project investment to $20 million.
ABTC is currently commissioning its integrated lithium-ion battery recycling Pilot Plant in Fernley, Nevada and this government funding will accelerate the demonstration and integration of next generation advanced recycling techniques into this processing train. The company has already developed these enhanced separation and processing techniques that will allow for the recovery of additional products and further reduction of energy and water consumption and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions. Through this U.S. DOE supported project, ABTC and its partners will validate and optimize each of these advanced technologies at the bench scale, then manufacture qualification batches of these products for evaluation and testing by downstream partners, followed by the scale-up of these advanced systems for integration into ABTC’s recycling Pilot Plant.
Last month, the company was selected for an additional U.S. DOE competitive award through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for approximately $57 million to support the construction of its commercial-scale primary lithium hydroxide manufacturing facility to develop its unconventional, sedimentary claystone resource near Tonopah, Nev. This primary lithium hydroxide from sedimentary claystone grant accelerates progress on the demonstration and facility commercialization efforts already underway, as ABTC, in collaboration with DuPont and the University of Nevada, Reno, was awarded a $4.5 million grant from the U.S. DOE in 2021 to build and operate a multi-ton per day demonstration-scale system to accelerate the commercialization and scale-up of this critical lithium manufacturing technology.