Li-Cycle Corp., North America’s largest capacity lithium-ion battery recycling company, announced that its Spoke 2 facility at Eastman Business Park (EBP) in Rochester, New York is now fully operational.

The company’s Spoke 2 will produce an intermediate mixed battery material product (“black mass”, typically a mixture of lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel in different ratios) from all types of spent lithium-ion batteries, in addition to the black mass currently being produced at Spoke 1 in Kingston, Ontario.

The new Rochester facility has the capacity to process up to 5,000 tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries per year, which brings Li-Cycle’s total recycling capacity to 10,000 tonnes/year through its two North American Spokes.

Li-Cycle’s Spoke & Hub Technologies minimize the overall environmental footprint of the end-to-end resource recovery process and substantially reduce the intensity of GHG emissions that would otherwise be produced from mining these finite resources.

Historically, most lithium-ion battery recyclers have used a smelting process to recover these valuable battery materials, resulting in high emissions and the loss of critical metals. Li-Cycle says that its recycling services eliminate these inefficiencies without creating any waste as a byproduct.

Li-Cycle says that its patented technologies enable recoveries of at least 95% of all materials found in lithium-ion batteries through an innovative, zero-waste process. This compares to the industry norm of less than 50% recovery. The company processes all types of lithium-ion batteries regardless of their previous application, chemistry, or state of charge.

Both Spokes will supply black mass to Li-Cycle's future Hub, which will be constructed at Eastman Business Park in Rochester by 2022. The Hub will process black mass in order to produce critical, battery-grade materials from recycled sources, as well as other recycled materials that can be returned to the economy.

Li-Cycle recently closed a Series C equity funding round to fund this development and to drive expansion into international markets.