The joint venture will focus on EV battery materials and eventually include recycling and refining elements.
Umicore and Volkswagen AG have announced that they plan to establish a joint venture (JV) focused on developing precursor and cathode material for electric vehicle (EV) battery cell production in Europe.
According to a news release issued by Umicore, headquartered in Brussels, through the joint venture Umicore and Volkswagen also will collaborate on the sustainable and responsible sourcing of raw materials. Both parties aim to include elements of refining and battery recycling into the scope of the partnership at a later stage.
Umicore says the joint venture’s precursor and cathode material production capacity will be ramped up gradually, starting in 2025 with an initial annual production of 20 gigawatt-hours for Volkswagen’s plant in Salzgitter, Germany, and should grow to an annual production capacity of up to 160 gigawatt-hours by the end of the decade. This compares with annual production capacity capable of powering about 2.2 million full EVs.
Umicore says it will continue to develop its technological and production capabilities to serve other customers and regions.
Mathias Miedreich, CEO of Umicore says, “As a leader in clean mobility materials, we are committed to support our automotive and battery-cell customers with their electrification strategies. We are very pleased to partner with Volkswagen in this unique joint venture and will bring in our long-standing and proven expertise in battery materials, as well as our strong commitment and solutions to today’s sustainability challenges. The complementarity of our extensive technology, innovation and industrial know-how, and shared sustainability convictions will provide a strong framework for the JV and will give us a considerable first-mover advantage.”
Thomas Schmall, a member of the board of management of Volkswagen Group for Technology and CEO of Volkswagen Group Component, says “The Volkswagen unified cell must be at the forefront of performance, costs and sustainability right from the start. Teaming up with Umicore enables us to establish a state-of-the-art supply chain in Europe as we share common values such as responsible sourcing of raw materials, as well as closed-loop thinking.”
The planned JV is subject to final agreements and customary conditions, including regulatory approvals.
ACC’s NAFRA is partnering with two universities on the project.
The Washington-based American Chemistry Council’s (ACC) North American Flame Retardant Alliance ( NAFRA) is collaborating with Charles Darwin University (CDU) in Darwin, Australia, and the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) in Al Ain to develop new processes to recover and recycle bromine and antimony from flame-retarded plastics. According to a news release from the ACC, the results of the project are expected to provide laboratory and modeling data to advance the technology to a pilot-plant stage.
“The project aims to test new ways of removing bromine and antimony safely and effectively from plastics prior to recycling the polymeric matrix into monomers and valuable fuels,” says professor Bogdan Dlugogorski of the Energy and Resources Institute at CDU and co-project leader. “CDU’s strong experience in energy and the environment will help guide this pyrolysis research effort.”
Pyrolysis is a process of chemically decomposing organic materials at elevated temperatures in the absence of oxygen. A key challenge with electronics recycling is its heterogeneous composition; these devices consist of various materials including metals, glass and plastics that need to be separated before being reprocessed.
“The underlying aim of this initiative is to design a process that recycles plastic with near-zero environmental pollution,” says Associate Professor Mohammednoor Altarawneh at UAEU and co-project leader. “The challenge is to underpin operational conditions that eliminate formation of bromine-bearing hydrocarbons and enable a complete fixation of bromine in the form of metal bromides, from which the metallic content could be easily separated and recovered.”
Guided by NAFRA engineers and scientists, CDU and UAEU will collaborate on the research, with experiments being performed in Darwin and quantum chemical calculations completed in Al Ain, by doctoral candidates at each of the universities.
“Professor Dlugogorski and associate professor Altarawneh are prominent scientists and chemical engineers recognized for their experience in chemical recycling and environment protection,” says Ben Gann, director of Products and Technology at ACC. “NAFRA is pleased that they are leading this initiative that will further the role of flame retardants in the circular economy and help enhance sustainability of these important safety tools.”
The program offers secure data management and recycling solutions to remote companies and small retail locations.
Clean Earth, a division of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania-based Harsco Corp., has launched AssetSure, an information technology (IT) asset recycling and data destruction program that allows remote companies and small retail locations to ship company-owned electronic assets from anywhere in the United States to a Clean Earth facility.
According to a news release from the company, many companies needed new processes to handle end-of-life electronics while working remotely at the onset of the pandemic. Clean Earth says this trend continues, which is why its new program aids in the remote management of end-of-life electronics, recovering value while securing customer data.
Customers receive prepaid labels and packaging materials. Their electronics are inventoried and shipped to a Clean Earth facility, where the items are inspected, recycled or destroyed while maintaining data security. The company says the program creates a more sustainable product life cycle through recycling while also helping to prevent financial losses from missing or never-returned electronics and providing full data security and brand protection.
“Our AssetSure program provides customers with a convenient, sustainable solution for secure data destruction and recycling of electronics at remote locations,” says David Stanton, president of Clean Earth. “With an increase in remote work, there is an elevated risk for e-waste mismanagement. Our customers can feel confident knowing their expired IT assets will be handled in a responsible and compliant manner to protect their data, brand and our environment.”
Company foresees ability to boost scrap tires-to-raw materials output.
Boulder, Colorado-based Bolder Industries Inc. has announced the purchase of the former Pyrolyx facility in Terre Haute, Indiana. The 66,000 square foot location, which ceased operations in March 2020, will be retrofitted with Bolder’s chemical process to handle scrap tires, using what Bolder calls “a currently permitted facility” to increase its manufacturing capacity within the first year of operations.
The initial renovation phase is expected to be completed in early 2023 and is being planned to convert approximately 3 million tires per year into Bolder’s products: BolderBlack carbon black and BolderOil fuel. The company says its process also generates steel scrap.
Bolder says the move will create an overall increase of nearly three times its prior capacity. The company says it has a successful track record of retrofitting existing manufacturing operations, including its purchase of a facility in Maryville, Missouri in 2014.
That location “has continued production 24 hours a day since it began full commercial operations in February of 2019,” states the firm. Bolder says it currently supplies some of the largest brands in the world “with sustainable raw materials in the petrochemical, tire manufactured rubber goods, plastics and auto” sectors.
“As a native Hoosier, it's incredibly rewarding to come back to my home state and revive a great concept and facility,” says Bolder Industries CEO Tony Wibbeler. “The Terre Haute facility is in an excellent location and has great elements that complement our proprietary technology and process. This purchase enables us to expand our capacity to meet current customer demand now and provides for future growth.”
Bolder Industries says it plans to invest approximately $40 million into the first phase of the project. In the recovery process to be put in place in Terre Haute, 98 percent of the tire’s materials are harvested, with 75 percent of the solids and liquids making their way back into new tires, manufactured rubber goods and plastics, says the company.
Bolder Industries’ raw materials yield an average of 85 percent savings in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, water usage and power usage compared to traditional raw materials production, says the firm.
A recently announced partnership with Pittsburgh-based Liberty Tire Recycling “will play an integral role in supplying end-of-life tires as feedstock to this facility” and the company’s increased capacity, according to Bolder.
Paper and board producers in China have adopted several techniques to overcome the ban on scrap paper imports.
In the previous decade, paper and board mills in the People’s Republic of China brought in as much as 30 million tons of recovered fiber annually to that nation, as its export-based economy produced containerboard and corrugated boxes at world-leading levels.
China remains a world leader in producing board and making boxes, but for inexplicable reasons, it now engages in that production without the benefit of importing old corrugated containers (OCC) and other scrap paper grades used to produce cost-effective paperboard. (The reason seems to pertain to the questionable label of “foreign garbage” being applied to OCC.)
Presentations and a panel discussion at the 10th Asian Recycled Fiber and Containerboard Conference in early December helped shed some light on how China’s board producers have adjusted to the disappearance of this once favored feedstock.
Tang Yanju, a secretary general with the China Resources Recycling Association (CRRA), said her association is involved in efforts to bolster recovered fiber collection in China. Tang said this is taking the form of a “market-based” system for industrial and commercial collection and a “public environmental service” format for residential material.
Paper and board producers and recycling firms have been signing contracts with local and provincial governments to open collection and sorting facilities throughout China, says Tang. The national government envisions a “more centralized and efficient” paper recycling system, changing from a formerly “decentralized” model, she added.
Among the companies operating such sorting centers is Shanghai-based Shanying International Holdings, according to Yan Dalin, a vice president and board member of that firm. Yan said Shanying has expanded its domestic sourcing radius for recovered paper beyond a former 300-kilometer (185-mile) limit “to make sure we have enough supply.”
Yan said Shanying also has made investments in recycled-content pulp production overseas. Shanying now has the capacity to convert more than 1.4 million tons per year of recovered paper into pulp. Most of that production is in Thailand, although the company also produces a recycled-content dry pulp product at smaller plants in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
In a panel discussion at the conference, Lucy Yao of Shandong Sun Paper said that firm is operating a pulp facility in Laos to help supply furnish. She said Sun also uses more domestic OCC generated within China, although the quality or yield of that material does not match imported OCC.
Fellow panelist Jennifer Li of Dongguan Jianhui Paper said that firm has chosen Thailand as the location of a pulp mill that converts overseas recovered fiber into a recycled-content product that can be shipped to its mill in South China.
RISI Fastmarkets economist Echo Xu said India-based producers of rolled sheets of recycled-content pulp have had success exporting to China in 2021. This is perhaps in part because the product looks like finished paper and does not incur the scrutiny of customs inspectors.
The early December RISI Fastmarkets event was held in Wuhan, China, and online for those unable to attend in person.