American Manganese awards C$2.7M contract to build two battery recycling plants to partner Kemetco

American Manganese Inc (CVE:AMY) (OTCQB:AMYZF) said it has awarded a C$2.7 million contract to its partner Kemetco to build a 500 kilogram (kg) per day demonstration plant and a 5 tonne/day commercial recycling plant using its ground-breaking technology.

The critical materials group has been working with Kemetco since 2016 on advancing the so-called RecycLiCo process, which sees key metals recovered from scrap lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles (EVs). The technology allows for high extraction of cathode metals, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, and aluminum at high purity.

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“Lithium-ion battery recycling is gaining recognition and I’m proud of Kemetco and our team for having the foresight to recognize this opportunity in 2016 and secure leading patents in this field,” Larry Reaugh, CEO of American Manganese said in a statement.

“Research and development projects take time to perfect and minimize risk, but our head-start puts us in an envious position as we advance towards a commercial offering.”

Reaugh also noted that following market research and consultation with Kemetco, the pair had decided to increase the initially planned commercial plant capacity to process battery cathode waste of five tonnes per day (t/d) from three t/d.

The goal of the demonstration plant is to provide a tool for licensing or joint developing RecycLiCo with potential industry partners, said American Manganese. And with the engineering data collected from the demonstration plant, Kemetco will design the commercial lithium-ion battery cathode waste recycling plant.

Among the many achievements of the American Manganese-Kemetco collaboration in recent years has been test results achieving 99.7% extraction of lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt from the process and achieving 99.99% purity on recycled lithium-ion battery material. It has also tested various cathode chemistries including NCA, NMC, LCO, and LMO, the company added.

Privately-owned Kemetco Research is an integrated science, technology and innovation company. It’s contract sciences operation provides laboratory analysis and testing, field work, bench scale studies, pilot plant investigations, consulting services, applied research and development for both industry and government.

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