According to Business Insider, the Singapore-based Green Li-ion wants to stop rechargeable batteries from going into landfills.
The market for batteries is continuously growing, as the number of gadgets that we use everyday, and that are powered by batteries, such as smartphones, laptops, and even electric cars, is also rapidly growing.
So, the market for battery cell production is estimated to reach 360 billion dollars in value by 2030.
But the batteries that power our gadgets have a limited lifetime. We are able to charge them only a limited number of times, and afterwards, once they reach the end of their life cycle, they end up in landfills. If we just throw them away randomly, the toxic metals and chemicals can get into the ground and maybe even in the water.
Battery recycling plants can give used batteries a new life, but the process is expensive and inefficient. This is where startups like Green Li-ion come into the picture.
"We throw away 95% of spent batteries into landfill. With our technology, we can recover that. If we don't, we cannot progress with the energy transition to a greater reliance on renewable batteries," says Leon Farrant, cofounder and CEO of Green Li-Ion, cited by Business Insider.
Farrant cofounded Green Li-ion alongside Reza Katal, the chief technology officer, in order to rejuvenate spent batteries into new ones without wastage, selling machines that make the process easier for recycling plants.
”Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been the preferred portable energy source in recent decades. The exponential growth in the use of LIBs for EVs, as a choice in energy storage and consumer devices has resulted in a great number of spent LIBs. Disposal of these spent LIBs will cause serious environmental problems due to hazardous components such as heavy metals and electrolytes.The current battery recycling methods are not suitable for LIB recycling due to its slow process, low purity of the products (low profits) and the use of non-environmentally friendly leaching reagents.Materials contained in the spent LIBs are valuable resources and can be recycled by using our specific technology”, it is stated on the Green Li-ion official website.
The technology provided by Green Li-ion allows clients to recover the most valuable part of the battery, the cathode, and it helps them be less reliant on manual labor to sort battery parts in the process.
Green Li-ion received in April an investment of 11.55 million dollars, and the money will be used to expand its operations in Europe, Malaysia, Australia, India.
The startup currently has a pilot system in Singapore and is completing a recycling system in Houston, Texas for LiNiCo Corp, a battery recycling firm, in Nevada.
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