Mercedes-Benz closes the battery loop
Mercedes-Benz has opened Europe's first battery recycling plant in Kuppenheim, southern Germany with an integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical process making it the first car manufacturer to close the battery recycling loop with its own in-house facility.
Unlike existing established processes, the expected recovery rate of the mechanical-hydrometallurgical recycling plant is more than 96%. Valuable and scarce raw materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt can be recovered – in a way which is suitable for use in new batteries for future all-electric Mercedes-Benz vehicles.
The company has invested tens of millions of euros in the construction of the new battery recycling plant.
“Mercedes-Benz has set itself the goal of building the most desirable cars in a sustainable way. As a pioneer in automotive engineering, Europe's first integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical battery recycling factory marks a key milestone towards enhancing raw-materials sustainability. Together with our partners from industry and science, we are sending a strong signal of innovative strength for sustainable electric mobility and value creation in Germany and Europe,” says Ola Källenius, Chairman of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG, in a press release
Mercedes-Benz’s technology partner for the battery recycling factory is Primobius, a joint venture between German plant and mechanical engineering company SMS group and Australian process technology developer Neometals.
The plant is receiving funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action as part of a scientific research project with three German universities. The project looks at the entire process chain for recycling, including logistics and reintegration concepts.
The Mercedes-Benz battery recycling plant covers all steps from shredding battery modules to drying and processing active battery materials. The mechanical process sorts and separates plastics, copper, aluminium and iron in a complex, multi-stage process. The downstream hydrometallurgical process is dedicated to the so-called black mass. These are the active materials that make up the electrodes of the battery cells. The valuable metals cobalt, nickel and lithium are extracted individually in a multi-stage chemical process. These recyclates are of battery quality and therefore suitable for use in the production of new battery cells.
The new battery recycling plant in Kuppenheim has an annual capacity of 2,500 tonnes. The recovered materials feed into the production of more than 50,000 battery modules for new all-electric Mercedes-Benz models.
