Tata Chemicals launches Li-ion battery recycling operations

Pilot-scale operations at a facility near Mumbai successfully recycled the spent Li-ion batteries. The company seeks to eventually scale up the capacity to recycle 500 tonnes of spent Li-ion batteries.

September 2, 2019 Uma Gupta

The smelting process to recover valuable materials from lithium batteries at a recycling plant.

Image: Umicore

Tata Chemicals—part of the over US$ 100 billion Tata Group—has commenced the commercial recovery of cathode active materials from spent lithium-ion cells/batteries.

“Li-ion battery recycling recovers valuable metals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese at 99% plus purity within Industry leading levels of yield. As a result, we will reduce environmental pollution, save energy and natural resources by extracting fewer raw materials from the earth”—read a press statement by the company.

The recycling operations are carried out at a 3P facility located near Mumbai. The operations, launched at pilot scale, have successfully recycled the spent Li-ion batteries and Tata Chemicals endeavors to scale it to recycle 500 tonnes of spent Li-ion batteries.

Ensuring circular economy

Significantly, Tata Chemicals has committed an investment of Rs 4,000 crore to set up a 10 GW lithium-ion battery plant in Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR) of Gujarat.

Speaking about the investment, Jai Prakash Shivahare, managing director, Dholera Industrial City Development Limited (DICDL) told pv magazine: “The company [Tata Chemicals] will set up 1.7 GW capacity in the first phase at an investment of Rs 750-1000 crore and then scale it to 10 GW as demand rises.”

Tata Chemicals has already been allotted 126 acres land in DSIR to set up Li-ion battery manufacturing business.

In its commitment to develop a sustainable circular economy, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) to develop technology for the recovery and purification of cathode and anode active ingredients from spent lithium-ion cells/batteries.

Under the MoU, Tata Chemicals will leverage C-MET’s intellectual property, capabilities and infrastructure to test and validate multiple recycling chemistries.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.