Westborough EV battery recycler strikes supply deal with UK material provider
Photo | Courtesy of Ascend Elements
Raw materials derived from recycled batteries at an Ascend Elements facility.
Ascend Elements in Westborough has reached an agreement with Koura Global to provide the United Kingdom-based company with up to 5,000 metric tons of recycled and recovered materials from lithium-ion batteries, enough to support the production of 1 million electric vehicles per year.
Ascend with provide Koura with lithium carbonate for the company’s fluoroproducts. Koura will use the recycled lithium carbonate for lithium-ion battery materials in the United States and Europe, according to a press release on Tuesday.
“Koura is leading the industry’s efforts to incorporate recycled content into materials for lithium-ion batteries,” Ascend Elements CEO Mike O’Kronley said in the release. “By recovering lithium and other critical metals from used lithium-ion batteries and manufacturing scrap, we are keeping those materials out of landfills while also making EV batteries cleaner and more sustainable.”
Ascend Elements recycles lithium-ion batteries and sells the recovered lithium carbonate to companies like Koura looking to reuse the expensive materials for production of other products that need it.
According to its website, Koura is the largest producer of fluorspar in the world and produces 20% of global supply. Fluorspar is a mineral used to manufacture aluminum, gasoline, insulating foams, refrigerants, steel, and uranium fuel.
Koura is part of the Mexican chemical company Orbia. In February the company signed a technology licensing agreement with Japanese company Kanto Denka Kogyo Co. Ltd. for lithium hexafluorophosphate, which is used in lithium-ion batteries, giving Koura access to Kanto Denka Kogyo’s technology and industry expertise in commercial hexafluorophosphate production.
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