Swedish battery supplier Northvolt on Friday announced that its recycling program Revolt has produced an EV battery that works using recycled metal.
A single battery cell uses a nickel-manganese-cobalt cathode made of metal recovered from waste batteries, Northvolt said in a press release. In testing, the recycled materials performed on par with newly manufactured metal, the company said.
Northvolt says recycling and manufacturing are both done at a single site in Västerås, Sweden. The company says the nickel, manganese and cobalt recovery process involves using an “aqueous solution” to isolate the metal from another material.
Photo of Northvolt Revolt Ett battery recycling plant
What’s important about this process is that Northvolt claims it can be scaled up to commercial levels. While batteries made from recycled materials may have been made in a lab before, Northvolt is preparing to build a plant that the company claims will be able to recycle 125,000 tons of batteries a year.
Construction of the recycling plant, located adjacent to Northvolt’s Ett battery factory in Skellefteå, Sweden, is scheduled to begin in 2022. Northvolt is aiming to start recycling operations by 2023. manufacturing, using end-of-life batteries from electric cars and scrap from battery factory Ett as raw materials.
The recycled material will feed the adjacent cell factory, providing enough metal for 30 GWh of annual cell production, or half of the plant’s total annual cell production, according to Northvolt.
Volvo and Northvolt partners in battery development and production
Northvolt will produce batteries for Next Generation Volvo EVs, to help support Volvo’s goal of reaching about half of all electric vehicle sales by mid-decade. Volvo has said that it is shifting to a cell-to-pack strategy with dedicated EVs due later this decade, announced alongside Recharge concept.
BMW also made a deal to supply from Northvolt starting 2024. Volkswagen announced a 50/50 joint venture with Northvolt, to maintain the battery supply chain for the European Union market in its home country.
In U.S.A, Ford announced a recycling partnership with Redwood Materials, while Synthetic engine has chosen Li-Cycle as its battery recycling partner. As reuse becomes more and more an important part of both supply chain sustainability and stability, you can bet it’s not the only well-known partnership in the field.
