An independent life-cycle assessment into Neometals’ Primobius lithium-ion battery recycling plants has shown the potential for its strategy to produce key battery materials with an exceptionally low carbon footprint.
The assessment, conducted by environmental impact mitigation company Minviro, confirmed Primobius’ integrated hydrometallurgical refining process had a significantly lower footprint in terms of global warming potential. It showed that potential was about 85 per cent lower than comparisons with predominant electric vehicle (EV) supply chains that start with primary mined nickel, cobalt and lithium sources.
Primobius is a joint venture (JV) between Neometals and SMS group, which has installed plants in nearly every country in the world. The assessment focused on the JV’s production of key battery materials including lithium fluoride, nickel sulphide hexahydrate and cobalt sulphate heptahydrate.
Management says scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions were included in the assessment, which was subject to a third-party international critical panel review.
Neometals managing director Chris Reed said: “The LCA evidences the sustainability of Primobius’ recycling plants and their potential to largely remove embedded carbon from the battery materials supply chain. Our hydrometallurgical recycling plants can deliver customers a secure supply of low-cost, low-carbon battery materials to satisfy their environmental ambitions and meet legislative requirements for new batteries to utilise recycled content.”
Management says the production of primary products has been traditionally dominated by processing mined raw materials. Using a simplified production process, the Minviro assessment comparison found Primobius will have lower global warming potential to the equivalent manufacture of primary products via mined extraction, with downstream Chinese and Indonesian refining.
By recycling lithium-ion batteries locally, regional recycling by Primobius reduces the high-carbon footprint associated with the logistics of the mined battery material supply chain.
Earlier this month, Primobius revealed it had produced industry-leading quality in trial production of battery-grade nickel sulphate from recycled lithium-ion batteries. The company believes the development, using its patented technology, has immeasurable implications for sustainability through the recycling of expired batteries, which have largely unchanged components that can be recovered and turned into new batteries.
Neometals says the purity of its nickel sulphate produced from recycled nickel-manganese-cobalt lithium-ion batteries exceeds specifications from Chinese cathode producers for nickel sulphate produced by recycling EV batteries. It says the results confirm Primobius’ ability to produce high-quality battery-grade nickel sulphate and validates the product previously produced in its 2019 pilot trials in Canada.
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