As the world decarbonizes to combat climate change, one of the moves is switching to electric vehicles that run on batteries instead of fossil fuels. That means there will soon be a lot of explosive batteries that need disposing of. It’s estimated that by 2025 cars will account for 90% of the lithium-ion battery market. As it stands, the situation is very unsustainable. But a company in the Nordics founded by two former Tesla executives in 2016 is developing a solution.
Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt has come up with a system of manufacturing and recycling batteries for electric vehicles. The company has an experimental battery recycling facility in Västerås, a small city in central Sweden. It plans to show off how car batteries can be recycled on a large scale. Since the summer, the project has been operational – retrieving raw materials from spent batteries and reusing them to make new ones.
Since 2019, Northvolt has been building a Gigafactory in the industrial city of Skellefteå in northern Sweden to serve a quarter of the European car battery market by 2030. The ultimate goal is to build a full-scale recycling plant adjacent to the Gigafactory – that is, if the pilot recycling facility proves successful. The first phase of the facility is to be operational by 2022, recycling 25,000 tons of battery cells yearly.
Northvolt’s chief environmental officer, Emma Nehrenheim, explained the challenges of recycling electric car batteries to Wired:
Whenever a battery pack is being dismantled from the car, it needs to be safely handled. It’s costly to do this safely, and it is very time demanding. Once a battery has been safely delivered to Northvolt’s recycling center, the process of dismantling and discharging takes place. The dismantling of the battery pack is currently done by hand, but Northvolt is in the middle of designing an automated dismantling system. The big obstacle for machines to overcome is battery design: no two are the same, forcing recycling facilities to craft different plans for different car batteries.
Northvolt uses 100% hydroelectricity to power its production process. Nehrenheim said:
We started looking for a site where we could have as high a proportion of renewables as possible to bring down the carbon footprint. We have a surplus of hydropower in the Nordics.
To further cut down on greenhouse gas emissions, the company will source the raw materials to make the batteries directly from the mines and produce the cathode itself. Furthermore, the refinement will take place near the mine. The localized process should create a shorter supply chain that’s more sustainable and easier to trace and monitor.
Northvolt aims to have 50% of the raw materials come from recycled batteries by 2030 and supplying 25% of Europe with its batteries. Nehrenheim said:
We are not picking the raisin from the cookie as we say in Sweden. We are not only talking about carbon footprints or recycling of cobalt. We are talking about ensuring that everyone understands what they are buying and about how to evaluate renewable energy in the entire supply chain.
Northvolt wants to lead a green battery revolution. Because while batteries may be better than fossil fuels for the environment, they still aren’t sustainable.
