Lithion Technologies establishing North American footprint

June has been an exciting month for Lithion Technologies.

The Montreal-based lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycler recently completed construction on its first commercial critical mineral extraction plant in Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Quebec, which now is in a commissioning phase to ensure its processes operate safely and effectively.

The 55,000-square-foot facility currently has the capacity to recycle 10,000 tons of batteries and production scrap per year but has the available space to process up to 20,000 tons per year as it develops an already-growing customer base. The plant has a team of 20 employees that could jump to as many as 60 once it reaches full capacity.

Lithion president and CEO Benoit Couture tells Recycling Today the company already has secured around 400 tons of feedstock—many of those tons attributed to electric vehicle (EV) batteries—that have arrived at the plant for processing. The company has approximately six multiyear feedstock agreements with local partners and large Canadian, U.S. and international corporations involved in the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem, and has an established relationship with Toronto-based Call2Recycle Canada that has given it access to smaller-sized batteries found in electronic devices, tools and e-bikes, among other items.

“We’re now starting to serve the market, and after seven years of investing and now being commercial, it’s quite a good moment,” Couture says. “We already have started to receive batteries and [are handling] the storage and dismantling and are starting all the other operations step by step. … We’re proud of it, and a lot of work has been done. We’ve proposed the market with a very safe and sustainable solution so we can serve the market the way the market needs to be served.”

The company plans to build similar black mass extraction facilities in the U.S. and Europe and is in the process of identifying potential locations. Additionally, it aims to build facilities where it will perform its hydrometallurgical process to separate materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel for use in new batteries.

Starting up

According to Lithion, much of the equipment installed in the new facility is custom-built to suit its patented processes and is the result of years of effort to enter the battery recycling space. Couture started the company in 2017 as a spinoff of a private engineering consulting firm he founded, Seneca. He says Seneca designed processes to produce lithium carbonate, lithium hydroxide and graphene oxide, for example, and refine them to a level where they could enter the LIB supply chain. During that time, he says the idea first arose to develop an end-of-life solution for those materials.

“We decided to invest and develop our own technology,” he says. “And then that gave birth to Lithion.”

Couture says Seneca developed patented technology that was fully transferred to Lithion in 2018, and in 2019 Lithion built its first remote pilot plant, which it has operated ever since. Through the pilot, Couture says the company has been able to ensure its technology is safe, robust and scalable. “We’ve had no fires, no injuries, no problems. We can prove our process is really safe.”

Along with support from the Canadian government, Lithion’s founders initially invested around $15 million Canadian ($10.9 million U.S.) to build and operate the demonstration plant. After that, the company secured about $125 million Canadian ($91.2 million U.S.) through a Series A funding round, which it used to build its Saint-Bruno facility.

The facility’s location near Montreal was chosen because of its relative closeness to regions where batteries are produced, and larger volumes of potential feedstock are generated. “In Quebec, we have access to the Northeast,” Couture says, adding that the company plans to open a storage facility in Pennsylvania in the near future what will help supply the new Saint-Bruno plant.

In a June 3 news release announcing the completion of its Saint-Bruno facility, Lithion says its expertise in transborder transportation and logistics will allow it to supply its plants from that Pennsylvania storage location while providing its partners a turnkey service, solving for them a complex and costly facet of LIB recycling.

“We will be pleased to welcome [potential partners] on board with us, so we’ll be able to use our logistics services and agglomeration at our storage facility to fulfill a plant in the Northeast [U.S.] as well,” Couture says. We’ll keep on developing. We’re [trying to] identify the best part of the United States to establish our storage capacity and future [processing] plants.”

Generating black mass

At its extraction facility, Lithion will take battery packs and dismantle them to their module size before shredding them. Couture notes that batteries can enter the shredding operation at any state of charge, and Lithion accepts a range of lithium-ion chemistries, including lithium iron phosphate (LFP).

Through its process, black mass is separated from all other battery components, which include aluminum, copper and heavy and light plastics. Couture says the level of black mass extraction has been tested at 98 percent—above what others in the sector are able to achieve.

“The technology we’ve developed is very, very safe, and we extract 98 percent of the black mass,” he says. “So, it’s a very, very effective process, and the black mass we produce is also safe and much easier to travel with.”

The black mass, comprised of lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese and graphite, eventually will enter Lithion’s hydrometallurgical process to separate and purify those materials so they can reenter the battery supply chain.

Material such as aluminum, copper and plastic are segregated during this process and sold back into their respective markets.

More to come

Lithion has plans for expansion into the U.S. and Europe and hopes to announce additional plant locations in the near future—including the site of its first hydrometallurgical plant—but Couture says much of his focus is on the present and the commissioning of the new facility near Montreal.

“What an exciting achievement to have completed the construction of our first commercial plant,” he says. “It’s a major milestone towards the realization of our dream of sustainably closing the loop of battery materials. And this is just the beginning. We will build more recycling plants, supplied by a network of battery collection and storage facilities across Canada, the United States and Europe to ensure the energy transition is a sustainable solution for generations to come.”

In the press release announcing the facility’s completion, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville Mayor Ludovic Grisé Farand says that because of its strategic location, Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville has become a “central hub in the North American supply chain, attracting innovative and ambitious companies such as Lithion Technologies that bring high-quality jobs here.”

Benoit Charette, minister of the environment, the Fight Against Climate Change, wildlife and parks and minister responsible for the Laurentides Region, says, “To ensure circularity and reduce pressure on resources and the environment, the energy transition underway in Quebec requires the creation of a value chain for our critical materials. I am happy to see the end of the construction phase of Lithion’s factory, which will ensure the recovery of electric batteries and, also, salute the innovation demonstrated by the company.”