Battery Resourcers says it plans to open North America’s largest lithium-ion battery recycling facility in August 2022, Kallanish reports.

The commercial-scale facility in Covington, Georgia, is being designed to process 30,000 tonnes/year of discarded lithium-ion batteries and scrap to recycle battery-grade lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese into cathode-active materials. The Massachusetts-based company says it is investing $43 million in the 154,000-square-foot facility and equipment.

The site is strategically located near several EV manufacturing hubs and lithium-ion gigafactories, the company says. The plant is expected to employ about 150 workers.

“Automotive OEMs are sitting on mountains of discarded batteries and scrap, and right now they have very few options for responsible and cost-effective disposal,” says ceo and director Michael O’Kronley in a statement.

His company is also planning to open an additional facility in 2023 for precursor and cathode-active material production, using the company’s patented technology. The company says its process is 93% cleaner at a 59% lower cost. It is also working to recover and purify graphite from EV batteries.

The company’s process includes taking old battery materials and “erasing” all memory of previous battery chemistry and then creating a new finished cathode-active material that can be directly used to produce new lithium-ion batteries.

The vertically integrated company was founded in 2015 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is a spinout from the laboratory of Yan Wang at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

The company says its long-term plans are to open additional facilities in North America, Europe and Asia to process 150,000 t/y of lithium-ion material.