Norwegian Firm Extracts Black Gold From Used Batteries – Taipei Times

• By Pierre-Henry Deshayes / AFP, OSLO

Wearing a white lab coat and with a gas mask at hand, Ole Jorgen Gronvold measures the moisture of an intriguing dark powder touted as planets next to black gold.

This black gold, a term that usually refers to oil, is actually good for the Earth.

In southeastern Norway is Europe’s largest facility for recycling used or defective electric vehicle batteries, turning them into a powder, or black mass, composed of nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium and graphite.

Photo: AFP

These so-called critical minerals, essential components in many clean energy technologies, must be reused to make new batteries, key cogs in the transition to a decarbonised economy.

The higher the quality of the components, the easier it is to use them for recycling, said Gronvold, a laboratory technician at Hydrovolt AS, a joint venture between Norwegian aluminum giant Norsk Hydro ASA and Swedish electric battery maker Northvolt AB.

The Hydrovolt plant was opened last year in the port city of Fredrikstad.

Within the next few months, the site is expected to be able to process 12,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries annually, the equivalent of 25,000 electric vehicle batteries.

Industry leader Norway, where electricity is generated almost exclusively from renewable energies, is the undisputed world champion of zero-emission electric cars, with the latter accounting for more than 80% of new vehicle registrations.

Depleted of electricity, the massive battery packs (weighing half a ton each) are systematically disassembled to recover up to 95 percent of the materials.

The aluminum is recycled by Norsk Hydro, while the black mass powder is sold to battery manufacturers.

This is the black gold that gives us life, said Glenn Ostbye, Hydrovolt’s interim head, as he led a tour of the plant dressed in a safety helmet and goggles.

Black gold is advertised as environmentally friendly as it comes from the recycling process rather than being mined in distant countries.

Battery recycling is, in many ways, an alternative to mines. We have somehow built a mine above ground, said Hydrovolt operations manager Andreas Frydensvang.

A battery can be made into a new battery indefinitely, he said.

Recycling is also helping to boost Europe’s independence when it comes to critical minerals, with the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine highlighting the continent’s problematic dependence on imported raw materials.

In Europe, we have large markets for products, but we don’t really have many of our own resources, Julia Poliscanova, head of electric mobility at the non-governmental organization Transport & Environment.

Globally, we are not a mining superpower for copper, cobalt or nickel, he said, adding that recycling waste is an obvious option.

And you can recycle much faster than you can start a new mine, he said.

Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign group, said recycling old batteries could cover at least 8 to 12 per cent of Europe’s critical mineral needs in 2030, and between 12 and 14 per cent % in 2035.

The European Parliament recently adopted regulations aimed at making batteries more sustainable and more easily recyclable.

However, Europe must also stop exporting its precious black mass to third countries, mainly China and South Korea, and develop its own hydrometallurgical processing plants, Poliscanova said.

This other crucial link in the recycling chain, which allows the metals contained in the powder to be extracted, is still on a small scale in Europe, managed only by a few companies such as Revolt in Sweden and Eramet SA in France.

Government subsidies are also needed for the many planned battery plants to see the light of day, creating an ecosystem conducive to recyclers, Poliscanova said.

The Fredrikstad plant is a pilot project and the project is expected to be exported, with Hydrovolt planning a second site in a year or two.

Most important to us is the degree of adoption of electric cars, so that there is a reservoir of end-of-life batteries, Frydensvang said. So we’re looking at countries like Germany, France and a little bit in the United States.