Ascend Elements, a vertically integrated battery recycling and engineered materials company, and Koura, a producer of fluoroproducts, have announced the launch of a proprietary process that yields battery-grade graphite material from spent lithium-ion batteries. Koura’s parent company Orbia is serving as a development partner to Ascend Elements to scale the company’s technology for commercial production, and has also backed the company through several investment rounds.

Ascend is currently producing battery-grade graphite at its facility in Westborough, Massachusetts. The company says its technology consistently yields over 99.9% pure graphite, which offers energy capacity and cycle life on par with virgin battery-grade graphite anode material. Its Hydro-to-Anode process technology can be used for both cathode active materials and anode materials.

Ascend says its recycling and manufacturing processes can reclaim not only high-purity graphite, but also lithium and cobalt.

“With this advancement, we just made the case for battery recycling a lot more compelling,” says Ascend Elements CEO Michael O’Kronley. “Increasing the value of the extracted materials improves the economics of recycling, which creates an incentive for even more recycling. The ability to recover graphite for use in batteries helps solve another critical material challenge in the battery supply chain and minimizes the need for mining new materials.”

Source: Ascend Elements