Millions of vehicles are equipped with or directly powered by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, reducing environmental pollution and reducing energy use. The use of lithium-ion batteries in this rapidly increasing fleet will introduce a large number of used units in a short period of time. Simply put, proper handling of used vehicle lithium-ion batteries is now a requirement. In this regard, Bengaluru-based urban mining startup Metastable Materials has come up with a unique solution. The company has implemented a battery recycling process that can extract copper, aluminum, cobalt, nickel, lithium and other metals from used lithium-ion batteries.
Founded in 2021 by Shubham Vishwakarma, Metastable Materials specializes in recycling lithium-ion batteries. The company is now expanding its battery recycling capacity by opening his 21,000-square-foot urban mining facility outside Bangalore with a material processing capacity of 1,500 tons per year. The startup is the first to deploy a chemical-free integrated carbothermal reduction (ICR) process for battery recycling that extracts valuable materials from lithium-ion batteries. The battery treatment methodology used by Metastable Materials, along with recovery rates of constituent materials exceeding his 90%, significantly reduce capital and operating costs compared to traditional battery recycling practices.
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Shubham Vishwakarma, Founder and Head of Process Engineering at Metastable Materials, said: The new unit will be able to offer a sustainable end-to-end one-stop solution for managing end-of-life lithium-ion batteries,” he added. The facility has intensive quality control and material handling capabilities to facilitate and manage the recycling of batteries and products at the critical end of life based on a “waste as mineral” concept. In the near future, it will also function as an on-site R&D center.
The startup aims to bridge the gap between supply and demand for rare metals such as cobalt, nickel and lithium. By extracting metals from spent lithium-ion batteries based on the ICR process, Metastable seeks to provide a sustainable alternative to newly mined metals and integrate them with existing industrial supply chains. is.
Metastable Materials has already attracted interest from several major players in the market, both to supply spent batteries for processing and to purchase the materials extracted from them, Vishvakarma said.
