Ascend Parts opened a recycling plant in Covington, Georgia in late March that it says is the largest electric-vehicle battery recycling facility in North America. “It will possibly course of 30,000 metric tons of enter annually, breaking down outdated batteries and prepping essentially the most beneficial supplies inside to be processed and was new batteries,” studies Canary Media. “That capability equates to breaking down the battery packs from 70,000 electrical automobiles yearly, stated Ascend CEO Mike O’Kronley.” From the report: Recycling can ship new battery supplies with out the expense and environmental affect of latest mining. This can be very laborious to develop new mines within the U.S., however the federal authorities is lavishing funds on new battery recycling crops. The revamped EV tax credit additionally name for rising shares of domestically sourced batteries and battery supplies. These market and coverage shifts made recycling sufficiently fascinating that Ascend is paying different corporations for his or her outdated batteries. For the time being, these offers are principally with EV or battery makers which have excessive volumes to eliminate.
“Paying for these spent batteries retains them from going into the landfill,” O’Kronley informed Canary Media. “It is higher to receives a commission for it quite than throw them away.” Ascend additionally accepts used shopper electronics from battery-collection packages, reminiscent of Call2Recycle. That is to not say there are sufficient outdated batteries coming in to fill the manufacturing unit. At the moment, 80 to 90 p.c of what is going on into Ascend’s Covington facility is scrap supplies from battery factories, together with SK Battery America’s plant in Commerce, Georgia.
That relationship influenced Ascend’s selection of location: Covington sits within the rising “Battery Belt,” a swath of latest battery factories and electric-vehicle crops opening up throughout the Midwest and the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky (search for all of the blue icons on this White Home map of latest industrial investments). Fellow battery-recycling startup Redwood Supplies additionally selected South Carolina for a forthcoming $3.5 billion recycling facility. “There’ll must be a recycling plant inside about an hour’s drive of each single a type of [new battery gigafactories],” O’Kronley stated. “You do not need to be [long-distance] delivery these very massive, heavy EV batteries which are categorized as Class 9 hazardous supplies.” The report notes that the corporate’s second commercial-scale facility in Hopkinsville, Kentucky will “introduce a brand-new approach for effectively extracting cathode supplies from black mass, which Ascend has dubbed ‘hydro to cathode.'”
