Senior Minister of State for Trade and Industry, Koh Poh Koon announced two lithium-battery recycling facilities on October 30, 2019. One will be on the sovereign island. However, the second one will be in France, thus heralding a new international business opportunity. Moreover, Singapore high-tech lithium reprocessing will complete a closed-loop cycle, he said. The precious metals can then be reused for other purposes in large quantities.
Target Date for Singapore High-Tech Lithium Plant
Koh Poh Koon made the announcement at the Asia Clean Energy Summit. He hailed the potential for grid energy storage enabling renewable energy including solar. The Singapore high-tech lithium reprocessing facility will open in February 2020. It and the French facility will cost a total S$25 million.
First, the Singapore plant will deploy 350-kilowatt peak solar photovoltaic panels for its electricity, according to CNA International Edition. Tes-Amm Singapore were not giving away trade secrets, except they will be using “proprietary in-house technology and equipment”. Elsewhere they have spoken of using auto punching machines and shredders to decompose batteries “into fine substances”.
An Environmentally Friendly Way to Process Fine Substances
Tes-Amm will use magnetic separators to isolate aluminum and copper, and “chemical treatments” to recover lithium and cobalt. These processes should not release secondary contaminants into the air. Therefore, this could be one of the first truly environmentally-friendly lithium battery recycling solutions.
The French and Singapore plants will source their raw materials from Europe and Asia respectively. That’s because both regions spew out vast quantities of scrapped lithium-ion batteries. Moreover, demand there is placing increasing pressure on raw material resources. Hence the French and Singapore high-tech lithium recycling initiative provides essential support for emerging applications.
“The battery space is already confronting future raw material bottlenecks”, says Tes-Amm Singapore CEO Gary Steele. Addressing both demand and supply with recycling simultaneously is an inspirational approach. This is especially so in terms of the scale of this operation.
Related:
China Electric Car Makers to Recycle Old Batteries
How to Recycle Different types of Batteries?
Preview Image: TES-AMM Singapore Brings in Another Load
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