Altilium produces commercially viable CAM

Recycling end-of-life electric vehicle (EV) batteries is likely to play a significant role in meeting supply for batteries in the UK and globally. However, not much work is being carried out to test the validity of recycled materials.

The CAM used in the testing was produced as part of a collaborative research project backed by the Advanced Propulsion Centre (APC23).

Dr Christian Marston, Altilium co-founder and COO, commented: “With these results, Altilum has shown recycled battery metals can perform as well as virgin metals and that critical minerals are essentially the same whether they come from a mine or an old EV battery.

“Our recycled CAM not only matches but can even exceed the performance of traditional materials. We have shown there is no need to compromise on performance, with the additional sustainability benefits of using recycled materials.”

Testing process for recycled CAM

Altilium conducted electrochemical testing of the cells from recycled CAM at its ACT1 facility in Devon.

The battery cycle testing process involves repeated charge and discharge cycles to confirm a material’s reliability and lifespan.

Through this process, the CAM was declared comparable with the CAM used in high-nickel NMC 811 batteries.

The cycle cell capacity of Altilium’s recycled CAM reached 193 mAh.g⁻¹ in testing, aligning closely with the 190-194 mAh.g⁻¹ range typical for commercial CAM, showing its equivalency.

Altilium also conducted additional analysis through X-ray diffraction (XRD) which confirmed that the structure of the CAM is indistinguishable from commercial variants.

XRD is a non-destructive and versatile technique that can be used to monitor a wide range of parameters, including phase composition, crystallite size and orientation of a material.

Atlilium is the only company in the UK producing CAM from recycled materials for production and qualification of new EV batteries. The company’s EcoCathode process is able to recover over 95% of the critical metals, including lithium, from end-of-life batteries.