New lithium-Ion battery recycling facility opens in Arizona
Li-Cycle Corp. has started operations at its new Arizona Spoke facility located in Gilbert, Arizona.
The company says that Arizona presents a significant opportunity for lithium-ion battery recycling due to the emerging electric vehicle supply chain in the region, as well as its close proximity to large markets such as California, which are expected to produce an increasing supply of end-of-life batteries available for recycling from EVs, energy storage projects and consumer electronics.
Li-Cycle’s Arizona Spoke facility will utilise proprietary technology that processes full EV battery packs without dismantling them manually, making the process safer and more labor efficient. The facility is located close to the company’s existing battery and manufacturing scrap supply network in the Southwestern United States, which optimises logistics and other efficiencies for recycling services.
“We are pleased to announce that our Arizona Spoke is operational,” says Richard Storrie, Regional President, Americas of Li-Cycle in the press release. “This new state-of-the-art facility enhances our ability to serve the recycling needs of our customers, while significantly increasing our operational recycling capacity. We’re also creating an additional domestic source of critical metals to be transformed and supply lithium-ion battery production.”
Li-Cycle’s Alabama Spoke, which is of the same design as the Arizona Spoke, is scheduled to be operational in the Company’s third quarter of 2022. When both the Arizona and Alabama Spokes are operational, Li-Cycle will have a total processing capacity of 30,000 tonnes per annum. By the end of 2023, the Company expects to have a total of 65,000 tonnes of lithium-ion battery processing capacity per annum, across its Spokes in North America and Europe.
The primary output product at the 140,000-square-foot Arizona facility is black mass; consisting of a number of critical metals, including lithium, cobalt and nickel, which Li-Cycle will convert into battery-grade materials at its first North American Hub facility, which is under construction in Rochester, New York. Li-Cycle expects that the Hub will be capable of processing 35,000 tonnes of black mass annually, with targeted commissioning in 2023.
