The work is part of a £30-million collaborative project announced by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC), which has been awarded grant funding of £15 million (earlier post).
The program will strengthen the technical expertise and R&D capability of the Nissan Technical Centre Europe (NTCE) in Cranfield, Bedfordshire, focusing on the development and advancement of EV battery reuse, recycling and energy balancing technology.
The consortium also includes battery producer AESC, a long-standing partner of Nissan, and Connected Energy, a leading provider of second-life battery energy storage solutions in the UK.
Building on Altilium’s development of proprietary green processing technologies, the two companies will work together to maximize the potential for raw material recycling and develop a “closed-loop” model for battery materials, thus reducing the need for mining and saving natural resources. This will include processing waste from spent Nissan leaf batteries and production scrap and then upcycling these materials to produce high nickel chemistry cathode active materials (CAM) for testing in the next generation of EV batteries.
The joint endeavor aims to establish a comprehensive, circular approach to managing EV batteries, ensuring minimal environmental impact and maximizing resource efficiency.
Altilium’s proprietary EcoCathode hydrometallurgical process can recover more than 95% of the cathode metals, including lithium, from end-of-life EV batteries. These recovered materials aren’t just recycled; they’re re-engineered and upcycled to high-nickel CAM, allowing their integration into new batteries. By upcycling these critical materials, the company aims to reduce the carbon footprint in CAM by 50% and the cost by 20%, compared to virgin mined materials.
Altilium’s full battery circularity model will provide a unique customer
offering in the UK, encompassing zero carbon EV battery collection, black mass recycling and chemical refining to produce 30,000 MT of battery-ready CAM, enough to meet 20% of UK requirement by 2030.
Altilium’s first mini-commercial plant is currently under construction in Plymouth while its planned Teesside plant will be one of the largest EV battery recycling facilities in Europe. The plant will have the capacity to process scrap from more than 150,000 EVs per year, producing 30,000 MT of CAM, enough to meet around 20% of the UK’s expected needs by 2030.
To date, Altilium has secured more than £6 million in backing from UK government innovation awards, including grants from the Faraday Battery Challenge and the Automotive Transformation Fund. The company is backed by SQM Lithium Ventures, the corporate venture arm of the lithium business of Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM).
