American Battery Technology Company announced the operational start-up of its commercial-scale, lithium-ion battery recycling facility located in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center (TRIC) in McCarran, Nevada, initiating implementation of its first-of-kind lithium-ion battery recycling technologies at an industrial scale. ABTC's first-of-kind integrated battery recycling system utilizes a strategic de-manufacturing and targeted chemical extraction train in order to recover battery materials with high yields, low cost, and with a low environmental footprint. These processes are fundamentally different than conventional methods of battery recycling, which utilize high temperature furnaces, such as in smelting operations, or non-strategic shredding or grinding systems. The ABTC system results in efficient separation, recovery, and purification of high-value battery-grade products with less environmental impact and greater cost efficiencies than conventional methods.

This commercial facility has the capacity to process over 20,000 metric tonnes of battery feedstock materials per year when fully ramped, and this first phase of operations will process these battery feedstock materials into recycled products including copper, aluminum, steel, a lithium intermediate, and a black mass intermediate material that will be sold through an already executed marketing agreement with the global metals trader TechMet-Mercuria. Once the second phase of this integrated recycling facility is operational, this lithium intermediate will be further refined into a battery grade lithium hydroxide product, and the black mass intermediate material will be further refined into battery grade nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium hydroxide products.