SK Innovation EV battery recycling technology approved by U.S.

SK Innovation owns a technology for recycling electric vehicle batteries, and it was reported that this had been approved by Argonne National Laboratory, a research facility operating under the U.S. Department of Energy.

The Korea Times reported that the Argonne tested the SK Innovation EV battery recycling tech and recognized its superiority in its capacity in cutting down greenhouse gas emissions. This information has been confirmed by the South Korean company.

The U.S. verification of SK’s EV battery recycling tech

The Argonne National Laboratory examined SKI’s EV batteries, and they were verified to be eco-friendly. The lab was able to give this result after placing the batteries under the life cycle assessment test.

It was said that the company is the first to develop this technology in the industry, so SK Innovation is the pioneer for this invention. With this innovation, it is possible and easier to extract raw materials for making EV batteries. The U.S. lab then verified that it could also considerably contribute to lessening greenhouse gas emissions.

Now, as automakers are now turning to the production of electric cars and slowly ditching the gas-powered ones, the need for better EV battery recycling has become crucial. There is also a growing requirement for this technology around the world; thus, SK Innovation’s recycling method came at the right moment.

Comparison of SK’s technology with other firms

While some battery recycling firms already exist, the method they use is very different from what SK just created, so it is considered as the first. It was explained that these firms make use of the wet process for the extraction of main substances from used batteries such as cobalt, nickel, and manganese.

“Typical recycling technologies recover lithium in the form of lithium carbonate, which is inadequate to reuse for high-nickel batteries,” The Korea Herald quoted an SK official as saying in a separate statement. “SKI’s technology extracts lithium directly in the form of lithium hydroxide, which is suitable for manufacturing high-nickel batteries.”

The existing process does the job, but the recovery rates are low, and so its purity. With SK’s technology, the lithium is taken out first, then nickel, manganese, and cobalt follow. Argonne Lab stated that when the lithium hydroxide is processed through SK’s battery recycling tech, the greenhouse gas emissions are effectively reduced by as much as 74% compared to sourcing lithium from mining sites.

"As the world-renowned U.S. national research institute recognized the eco-friendly nature of our technology, we expect we will have growing business opportunities with global EV makers regarding the recycling of used EV batteries," SK Innovation said.

Meanwhile, the Argonne National Laboratory made a life cycle analysis tool that was called GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies), and this was how SK Innovation’s battery recycling was evaluated. GREET is applied for evaluating energy use and emissions in addition to water consumption on a life cycle basis.