Jamshedpur-based National Metallurgical Laboratory (NML), a constituent lab under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has commissioned a battery recycling pilot facility.

Officials at the NML claimed that it was the CSIR’s (functioning under the Union ministry of science and technology) first such battery recycling facility and will help in reducing dependency on the import of critical metals like lithium, nickel and cobalt which are essential in lithium battery manufacturing.

Incidentally, lithium batteries are used in mobile phones, laptops, EVs, solar power backups and other tools.

“Realising the potential of battery recycling to meet the critical demand for lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt and adhering to India’s Atmanirbhar Electric Vehicle mission, the National Metallurgical Laboratory, Jamshedpur with the support of CSIR-Bulk Chemical Mission, has commissioned CSIR’s first battery recycling pilot facility at its campus,” said senior principal scientist at NML, Abhilash.

“This facility encompasses 1TPD (tons per day) battery dismantling and cathode material separation setup, apart from the integrated large-scale hydro metallurgical facility for extraction and separation of critical metals. The facility is able to tackle any kind of spent rechargeable batteries belonging to the class of lithium-ion batteries, and nickel-based batteries, for process validation and technology transfer under hire-operate–transfer mode (sign an agreement for hiring the facility, operate it and then get technology transferred),” added Abhilash.

The facility will initially operate under the NML’s patented flowsheet (inventors — Pratima Meshram, Abhilash and Sanjay Kumar) on closed-loop extraction and separation of all metals from any chemistries of spent lithium-based batteries and expand to other batteries based on the interest of the recyclers.