Arizona will get a new lithium-ion battery recycling plant

When complete, the company's “Spoke 3” facility will be capable of processing up to 10'000 tonnes of end-of-life batteries and battery manufacturing scrap per year, bringing Li-Cycle’s total recycling capacity to 20'000 tonnes per year. The construction of Spoke 3 builds on Li-Cycle’s existing North American Spokes, located in Rochester, New York and Kingston, Ontario, and is part of Li-Cycle’s strategic roadmap to construct twenty Spokes globally over the next five years. The Phoenix metropolitan area is located close to Li-Cycle’s existing battery supply network, as well as being at the nexus of where there will be continued growth in the quantity of lithium-ion batteries available for recycling, a press release from the Arizona Commerce Authority reads. "Once completed, our newest Spoke facility will add significant recycling capacity to Li-Cycle, strategically expanding the geographic footprint of our closed-loop solution for recycling lithium-ion battery materials,” says Tim Johnston, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Li-Cycle in the press release. “Our Arizona Spoke will have two 5,000 tonne processing lines, effectively doubling our total recycling capacity in North America. It will also be engineered to directly process full electric vehicle packs without any dismantling.” Li-Cycle’s Spokes convert battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries into intermediate products, including “black mass”, a powder substance which contains a variety of metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel. The Spokes will supply black mass to Li-Cycle's future North American Hub, which is currently in late-stage development in Rochester, New York. The North American Hub will process black mass through a hydrometallurgical circuit to produce critical, battery-grade materials, including lithium carbonate, cobalt sulphate and nickel sulphate, as well as other recycled materials that can be returned to the economy.