American Manganese adds Japan to patent portfolio covering its ground-breaking recycling technology

American Manganese Inc (CVE:AMY) (OTCMKTS:AMYZF) (FRA:2AM) said it has added a Japanese patent to its portfolio, further bolstering protection around the company’s ground-breaking lithium-ion battery recycling technology.

The Japanese patent office has issued a ‘notice of allowance’ with respect to the company’s national phase patent application for RecycLiCo. The latest patent will join those already issued to American Manganese in the USA and South Korea.

READ: American Manganese uses its recycling tech to produce cathode material suitable for today’s EV batteries

“I have always stressed the importance of a patent portfolio because of its respected validation process, transparency, added core value, and recognition,” said Larry Reaugh, American Manganese CEO in a statement.

“We are currently in a booming age of battery-related innovation and Japanese companies, such as Panasonic, Sony, Toyota, Nissan, and Hitachi, stand out as world leaders in battery innovation, alongside Korean companies such as LG Chem, Samsung SDI, and SK Innovation,” he added.

Since 2016, American Manganese has been working with partner Kemetco on advancing the RecycLiCo process, which sees key metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, recovered from scrap lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles (EVs).

The company has listed key aspect of the process as:

• Treatment of several cathode chemistries such as lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC), and lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA)
• Methods for achieving 100% extraction of cobalt, nickel, manganese, aluminum for all cathode chemistries tested
• Method for achieving 100% lithium extraction by a novel locked cycle process

On June 29, American Manganese told investors its technology has the potential to ‘upcycle older style cathode materials into ones, which can be used in modern electric vehicle (EV) batteries.

With Kemetco it has successfully produced so-called, NMC-532 cathode precursor from recycled NMC (lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt oxide) cathode waste, it said.

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Story by ProactiveInvestors