The British battery materials and recycling company Altilium is entering into a partnership with LevertonHELM, a British subsidiary of the German chemical company HELM AG. Both companies want to work together on a sustainable domestic supply chain for lithium in the UK.
The aim is to combine Altilium’s expertise in the recovery of battery materials from waste batteries with LevertonHELM’s lithium production capacities. As part of the cooperation, LevertonHELM will initially process technical-grade lithium carbonate from spent batteries and production waste at Altilium’s ACT1 recycling plant in Devon. If this qualification process is successful, both parties anticipate that this will lead to offtake and refining agreements for the supply of recycled lithium in the UK.
The UK is aiming to establish its own supply chain for lithium, an important component of electric car batteries. To date, however, 60 to 70 per cent of lithium for electric car batteries comes from China.
Altilium’s recently opened ACT2 recycling plant in Plymouth has the capacity to recover lithium and other battery metals from 300kg of black mass waste per day. The facility will utilise and refine the company’s proprietary EcoCathode process, which will later be used on an industrial scale at the planned ACT4 plant in Teesside. The plant will not only produce active cathode materials (CAM) for qualification by automotive customers, but also large quantities of lithium to be made available for the UK supply chain.
Merve Cruz, Director of Partnerships and Strategic Sourcing at HELM Energy Materials, explained: “Partnering with Altilium is a promising step forward in developing the HELM lithium portfolio. The planned alliance underlines our focus on specialized solutions and the much-needed approach of recycling existing resources to support a sustainable supply chain for lithium, especially in Europe and the UK.”
LevertonHELM extracted a lithium chloride solution from thermal water in a joint demonstration project with EnBW at a geothermal power plant in Bruchsal in the summer using direct lithium extraction (DLE). LevertonHELM converted this solution into high-purity lithium carbonate at its facilities in Basingstoke, UK.