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The Impact of EV Battery Evolution (Revolution?) on Battery Recycling and

Battery Metals Processing

Article · August 2020

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The Impact of EV Battery Evolution (Revolution?) on Battery Recycling and
Battery Metals Processing
Lyle Trytten, Trytten Consulting Services Aug 18, 2020
Electric vehicle and electric storage system battery technology development is an exciting area.
Announcements on both evolutionary and revolutionary battery innovations come out
monthly, spiking interest. Cobalt-free, nickel-free, solid-state, zinc-, sulphur- or vanadium-
based – so many choices. Automotive and battery companies are racing to meet ever higher
thresholds of energy density, longevity, safety, and cost. There is lots going on, which is great!
The innovation space in battery technology is exciting to watch. At the same time, there is very
little oversight or control on the ability to make an announcement, so how to tell what impact
any of it will have? What will actually make it to market? What will change the world? It is
hard to know, but the timeline on fundamental change is long, and the path difficult to bring
revolutionary change forward. Facing the technology valley of death is not for the faint of heart.
At the same time, battery metal (nickel, cobalt, lithium, etc) mineral resource announcements
are just as frequent. Deposits, drilling, resource quantification, processing testwork,
environmental attributes, and feasibility studies of different levels are cropping up quickly.
Most of these are governed by some level of regulatory oversight in most countries, including
quite rigid regulations around mineral properties in most of the developed world (a response to
past poor practices). It’s a little easier for a knowledgeable practitioner to sort the great from
the good from the ok in this market. But what do we need in the long term? Is cobalt demand
going to spike or crash? What about nickel? Or the other metals? Copper seems a safe bet for
increasing demand, at least until someone develops long-range high-capacity wireless energy
transfer – that doesn’t fry birds in the process.
And recycling announcements also come along fairly often. Lots of discussion of the need for
battery recycling, from both an environmental standpoint and a resource supply constraint
standpoint. The circular economy trend that is building in Europe will come to the rest of the
world in due course. Not a lot of commercial facilities yet, but I have confidence that the
market will develop these, if not soon out of foresight then later as metal prices rise due to
commodity shortages.
What I have yet to see is a serious discussion linking these three areas. As an investor and
consultant within the battery metals space, I understand that investors are hesitant to bet
millions on developing a battery metals project that is a decade out, and billions on a project
that is a few years out, when the key demand rise is linked to so much innovation activity. The
froth is hard to see through to understand the future. Predictions are easy, knowledge is not.
As a metallurgist, I know we have to work with what Mother Nature put in the ground. Every
deposit is different, and within most deposits there are significant differences that may require
modifications to the processing techniques. This is why geometallurgical understanding of a
deposit is so important: the “average” ore is that which your process plant will probably never
see. Just like the mass balance is the one operational point at which your plant will never
operate. They are approximations, hopefully useful ones, but the feed and operation will be
different, and fluctuating. The level of that fluctuation in feed characteristics, combined with

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the robustness and flexibility of your processing plant, are what dictate whether the variation in
the orebody is a significant complication or a minor one. Which is why processing techniques
which are either robust (can handle multiple ore types) or flexible (can adjust operating
parameters to match the ore characteristics) are so important.
Big hammer approaches (smelting furnaces) tend to be robust – the ore will be melted, slag and
matte will separate, and the matte will be fairly consistent leading to simpler and more reliable
downstream processing. But significant changes, i.e. in slag chemistry, can still create a big
problem.
Some mineral processing operations, such as froth flotation, are flexible; changing reagent
types and dosages, modifying equipment operation, etc. give you a range of operation.
However, some techniques are neither robust nor flexible. Comminution doesn’t care much
about your mineralogy or recovery techniques. Harder ore will take more energy or limit
throughput, so understanding the range of comminution behaviour across the deposit, at least
for the first several years, is critical before large-scale investment in equipment. Equipment can
be modified over time, but you don’t want to face that in Year 2 when you find out that the
hardest ore is encountered early on, and the Year 20 ore will “average it out”. Doesn’t help.
Hydrometallurgical processes fit between the extremes of robust (big hammer) processes and
flexible (adjust as you go) processes. They are quite robust and will accommodate a range of
feed types depending on their strength. The more aggressive approaches (high-pressure acid
leach, chloride leach, etc) tend to be more robust since they dissolve almost everything. The
less aggressive, more selective approaches (i.e. moderate temperature ammonia or sulphate
leaches) tend to be more sensitive and prone to upset, but generally easier and/or cheaper to
operate. Process selection requires some degree of forecast of the variability of what you will
be processing.
Which leads me back to recycling. Recycling is much like processing orebodies – you have to
deal with what you have, in both physical form and chemical makeup. And in the context of
evolving (and revolutionary) battery innovations, what is that? Batteries are changing in both
physical form and chemical structure. To execute a large mineral project, you have a forecast
of what ore the plant will see for a long time: often 10 years for precious metals, 20 years for
base metals, even longer for large capital-intensive projects. This gives certainty on the
investment. However, how do you plan your recycling plant for electric vehicle batteries?
What will be the battery feeds in 5 years? The batteries from 3 years ago. What about 10
years? Probably the batteries in use today (or the recent past if we see large-scale battery
downcycling from vehicles to electric storage systems). What about in 20 years? Or 30 years?
We want a facility that recycles all the components of the battery. And we want to build a
facility once and run it forever – many metal refineries are operating today more than 50 years
after construction; this long life is desirable. But it is hard to guarantee that on recycling
facilities when we know neither the physical nor chemical form of the feedstock 20, 30, 40
years out. So they have to be designed to be flexible. To be able to take batteries in different
physical forms. To adapt to changing recipes (evolutionary change, i.e Ni:Co ratio). To be
reconfigured for fundamental changes in battery technology (revolutionary change – different

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 anodes and cathodes). Or if not flexible, to be scrapped and recycled themselves after a
shorter useful life, and a new facility developed for new battery technology.
I do believe we will continue to see Li-ion NMC batteries for a long time – so we should
progress recycling facilities based on that technology. But I also know I don’t have the answers
to what the future holds. This is not a call for battery innovation to cease. But it is a call for the
industry to ensure that circular economy considerations such as recycling are taken into
account in the commercialization of battery evolutions and revolutions. Just because you can
make something “better” doesn’t mean you should, even if it gives you a competitive edge on
power density, or cost, or lifespan. Your version of better needs to include the whole lifecycle
and supply chain.

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