Aqua Metals Has Created A Novel Approach To Recycling Li-Ion Batteries That Is Safer And Greener

Benzinga

Steve Cotton, President & CEO of Aqua Metals, was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.  Aqua Metals is reinventing metals recycling with its patented hydrometallurgical AquaRefining™ technology. Unlike smelting, AquaRefining is a room-temperature, water-based process that emits less pollution. The modular Aqualyzers™ cleanly generate ultra-pure metal one atom at a time – closing the sustainability loop for the growing energy storage economy.

Transcript

00:00 (upbeat music)

00:02 - Steve, welcome to the show.

00:06 - Hey, thanks for having me.

00:08 - Absolutely, you bet.

00:09 A lot of interesting things for us to talk about,

00:11 but before we look under the hood,

00:13 give the viewers a quick overview

00:14 of what is it that your company does.

00:16 - Yeah, so Aqua Metals has developed a way

00:19 to use a decarbonized method

00:22 to recycle lithium ion batteries.

00:24 And it's really unique because it's waste-free,

00:28 decarbonized and has really favorable economics.

00:31 And we're right here in Tahoe, Reno area

00:34 and have developed our first plant,

00:37 which we're turning on at a commercial grade

00:40 just later this year after running a pilot plant

00:42 for over a year.

00:44 - Now I was in college a while, while back,

00:46 and I remember recycling was something that,

00:48 I mean, I maybe call it new,

00:49 but something that was kind of really ramping up

00:51 and obviously still a very important thing

00:53 to take care of mother nature here.

00:55 How does your metal recycling process

00:57 improve upon like a traditional methods

00:59 that may have been used to when I was in college?

01:02 Is it more safer?

01:03 Is it more sustainable and is it more efficient?

01:05 - Yeah, so what there was when you were in college

01:09 probably dates back to the Bronze Age,

01:11 which is called smelting.

01:13 And that is really high temperature,

01:15 3000 degree furnaces, brute force technique

01:19 to grab these minerals to the extent possible.

01:23 The challenge with lithium battery smelting

01:25 is that lithium is such a light and airy element,

01:28 let's say it gets volatilized and burned

01:31 and put into the atmosphere along with a bunch of CO2.

01:35 And so that is really not a sustainable way

01:37 to recycle lithium ion batteries

01:39 'cause you're not even really a lithium recycler.

01:41 You might be claiming some fractional nickel and cobalt

01:44 through that process, but that's about it.

01:46 Then along came hydro,

01:48 which is hydro metallurgies from the mining era.

01:52 And that's where you take one time use chemicals

01:54 and you leach those chemicals through ground up batteries

01:58 that's called black mass,

01:59 which is the amalgam of lithium, nickel and cobalt.

02:02 And the challenges there is you create CO2 molecules

02:07 and you create a bunch of sodium sulfate waste stream,

02:10 which is both of which are at or higher

02:13 than the weight of the process,

02:16 the materials that's being recycled to begin with.

02:18 And so that's not really a sustainable method either.

02:21 So what we developed was a way to use electricity

02:24 and renewable electricity to regenerate the chemicals.

02:28 And so it kind of borrows from some of the hydro techniques

02:30 but uses regenerative electro hydro metallurgy

02:33 to make sure that we don't have the CO2

02:36 and that we don't have the sodium sulfate

02:38 and all the costs, not only environmentally,

02:40 but financially associated with that.

02:42 - It's amazing how much goes into something like recycling

02:45 because we think, hey, you just put it in a trash can

02:48 that's separate and then that's about it.

02:50 No, there's a lot that happens behind the scenes obviously.

02:52 You know, when I was looking up some things

02:54 for this interview, this kind of stood out.

02:57 Circular supply chain.

02:59 I've never heard of that term.

03:01 What is it and how have you kind of achieved it?

03:04 - Yeah, so the true circularity is when you make stuff,

03:09 use it and then put it back into that whole ecosystem

03:12 over and over and over again, infinitely.

03:14 Recycling leads up to true circularity.

03:18 And to have true circularity,

03:21 you have to do that in a way that is tied to the industry,

03:25 but also doesn't have all those environmental impacts.

03:28 And so when we're talking about circularity

03:30 and the circular economy, what that really means

03:32 is a clean and sustainable way

03:36 to continuously reuse these products

03:38 over and over and over again.

03:40 And recycling is really the backbone of circularity.

03:44 And we talk a lot about electrification of transportation

03:46 like EVs or energy storage systems for solar

03:50 and wind and all that.

03:51 But if you don't have that circularity

03:54 that brings all those minerals

03:55 that we dug out of the earth once,

03:57 and hopefully only once,

03:59 then you really haven't achieved that term of circularity.

04:03 - What impacts does it have, especially the methods,

04:05 which you just mentioned earlier in the show

04:07 and everything else you're doing in the company,

04:09 have on the lithium ion space in general?

04:12 - So the lithium ion space is certainly growing

04:16 at a great rate.

04:17 And the recycled content of lithium ion batteries today,

04:21 interestingly, is quite low.

04:23 And that is around 1%.

04:25 So most of the lithium ion batteries to date

04:27 have ended up unfortunately in the landfill

04:29 and not part of circularity.

04:31 And so that's what the recycling efforts

04:33 really are all about is to get that to a high percent.

04:36 If you look at the lead acid battery industry,

04:38 kind of the precedent battery,

04:40 which is still a growing industry,

04:42 and if you compare the circularity that's there,

04:46 it's about 90%.

04:47 So you go buy a lead battery,

04:49 90% of it's gonna have the metals from prior lead batteries

04:53 that were recycled over and over and over again.

04:55 And that's where we're taking the lithium industry to

04:57 as we stand up this industry and grow it

05:00 with truly sustainable recycling.

05:03 So it's that important.

05:05 - All right, and then you,

05:07 we've talked about the processes of it.

05:08 I wanna talk about the money aspect,

05:10 which I know viewers will have to kind of

05:11 get some insight on.

05:12 - Sure.

05:13 - What do you kind of see changing in the year to come?

05:16 I believe you had a net loss of close to about 24 million

05:18 in 2023.

05:20 What can we expect in terms of changing

05:22 and entering the revenue phase?

05:24 What's ahead?

05:25 - Yeah, so we've been doing the heavy lift of,

05:29 we've gone through feasibility study,

05:31 lab scale, bench scale.

05:33 We built our pilot operations

05:35 in Tahoe Reno Industrial Center

05:36 and successfully scaled and operated that

05:38 for 24 hours a day, five days a week for a year.

05:41 And now we're in the midst of building

05:43 what we call the Sierra Arc,

05:44 which is our first commercial facility,

05:47 which we'll turn on later this year

05:48 and it will begin producing revenues.

05:50 And that Sierra Arc will produce enough materials

05:52 for about 30,000 EV battery packs,

05:56 average size worth of critical battery minerals.

05:58 So it's not a small facility.

06:00 It's not gigantic, but it's at the right step of scale.

06:05 That'll ultimately scale further in a couple of years,

06:07 but the revenues will actually start commencing

06:11 as we get into the end of this year,

06:12 the beginning of next year,

06:14 as we get the first real first truckloads

06:17 of nickel and lithium and then cobalt

06:20 off of those machines

06:22 and that we're putting into that facility.

06:25 So it's right around the corner,

06:26 just a matter of months away.

06:28 Very exciting time for us.

06:30 - And then let's talk about the,

06:31 you've had the critical minerals

06:34 that kind of come into it, right?

06:35 Where you have them ready available

06:36 to fully serve the global energy transition

06:40 without advanced processes like yours,

06:43 are there enough critical minerals out there

06:45 to have a global energy transition?

06:47 - There is always gonna be supply demand tension points.

06:53 And interestingly, the metals markets

06:55 have seen a little bit of a pullback

06:56 in the prices of metals of late.

06:58 But now I think we've seen the bottom

07:00 and we've seen some nickel and lithium prices

07:04 start to go up again.

07:05 And that supply demand tension right now

07:07 is only between mining and the market.

07:11 And as we add recycling,

07:13 we think that that's going to be able to help propel

07:16 and get that 0% to 1% of recycled content up

07:21 and then also feed into that market growth

07:23 'cause that's where we need to ultimately get.

07:25 So recycling is gonna be a key and critical part

07:27 of this really quickly growing need for all these minerals.

07:31 And by the way, we are the only producer we believe

07:35 that's gonna be at a commercial level,

07:36 this like mining nickel,

07:38 we happen to be urban mining in North America

07:42 as well as lithium in a sustainable way.

07:45 So that's really an important aspect of it as well

07:47 is that you have to look at it as urban mining

07:49 and re-mining that supplements that earth mining.

07:54 - Got it.

07:55 Now, look, we've talked about the past,

07:56 we talked about the present,

07:57 we talked about money as well.

07:58 Any other final thoughts for me before we let you go?

08:02 - Well, just keep an eye on us.

08:03 It's a really exciting time.

08:05 You can go to the AquaMetals website

08:07 and click on the media tab

08:09 and you can see updates of what our CRR looks like,

08:12 the progress that's been made.

08:13 And as we turn that on,

08:14 we've got a lot of information

08:16 that's gonna be posted up there and it's a great resource.

08:19 And literally by the week, by the month,

08:22 this is where we're really getting to the point

08:24 of turning things on and getting into that revenue.

08:26 Really exciting time.

08:27 - Well, I look forward to having more conversations

08:29 when you make those milestones public.

08:31 Thank you so much for your time.

08:32 I really appreciate it, Steve.

08:34 - Yeah, thank you.

08:35 Thank you for having me.

08:36 (upbeat music)

08:38 (upbeat music)

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