Words by Smiley Team
Catering to a building number of electric vehicle owners, Volkswagen has launched a battery recycling system that will set the way for a greener car industry of the future. Built in Salzgitter, their new recycling plant is designed to recover valuable raw materials such as lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, as well as aluminium, copper and plastics. With this initiative, they are aiming at a recycling rate of more than 90 per cent.
One of those leading the project, their chairman of the board of management at Volkswagen Group Components, Thomas Schmall, said: “Volkswagen Group Components has achieved a further step in its sustainable end-to-end responsibility for the battery as a key component of electric mobility.
“We are implementing the sustainable recyclable materials cycle – and play a pioneering role in the industry for a future-oriented issue with great potential for climate protection and raw material supply.”
Making the recycling process as environmentally-friendly as possible, the company has inserted various precautions that will reduce its carbon intensity. To avoid any unnecessary carbon emissions from the process, not all batteries are recycled. Instead, each second-hand product that arrives at the recycling plant will be analysed to check if it has enough battery life left to be used in lower-power products such as Volkswagen’s flexible rapid charging station or its mobile charging robot.
In another step to reduce emissions, the engineers avoided energy-intensive melting in a blast furnace. To replace this process, the batteries are deep discharged and dismantled. Each part is ground into granules in the shredder and then dried. This process yields vital materials such as aluminium, copper and plastics, as well as ‘black powder’, a compound containing the important raw materials for batteries including lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt and graphite. To separate the materials they use water and chemical agents through a process conducted by the company’s specialist partners.
“As a consequence, essential components of old battery cells can be used to produce new cathode material,” explained Mark Möller, Head of the Business Unit Technical Development & E-Mobility: “From research, we know that recycled battery raw materials are just as efficient as new ones. In future, we intend to support our battery cell production with the material we recover. Given that the demand for batteries and the corresponding raw materials will increase drastically, we can put every gram of recycled material to good use.”
The company doesn’t expect large volumes of returned batteries until the late 2020s at the earliest. So they designed the plant so that it would recycle up to just 3,600 battery systems per year for the initial pilot phase. As progressively more batteries are submitted, they can scale up the system to handle greater quantities.
Through this initiative, Volkswagen is pioneering the way for a greener future, by shrinking the carbon footprint of the electric car industry even further. By buying an electric vehicle, motorists can reduce both their emissions and their expenses. If sourced from renewable energies, electricity significantly reduces a car’s carbon emissions. On top of this, recharging at an electric vehicle station also ends up cheaper.
