Wearing a white lab coat and with a gas mask within reach, Ole Jorgen Gronvold measures the humidity of an intriguing dark powder touted as the planet’s next “black gold.”
This “black gold” — a term that usually refers to oil — is actually good for the Earth.
In southeastern Norway lies Europe’s biggest plant for recycling used or defective electric vehicle batteries, turning them into a powder, or “black mass,” made up of nickel, manganese, cobalt, lithium and graphite.
Photo: AFP
These so-called critical minerals — essential components in many clean energy technologies — are to be reused to make new batteries, key cogs in the transition to a decarbonized economy.
“The higher the quality of the components, the easier it is to use them for recycling,” said Gronvold, a laboratory technician at Hydrovolt AS, a joint venture between Norwegian aluminum giant Norsk Hydro ASA and Swedish electric battery maker Northvolt AB.
The Hydrovolt plant opened last year in the port city of Fredrikstad.
Within the next few months, the site is expected to be able to process 12,000 tonnes of lithium-ion battery packs per year, the equivalent of 25,000 electric vehicle batteries.
Industry leader Norway, where electricity is almost exclusively generated by renewable energies, is the uncontested world champion of zero-emission electric cars, with the latter accounting for more than 80 percent of new vehicle registrations.
Emptied of electricity, the imposing battery packs — they weigh half a tonne each — are methodically taken apart to recover up to 95 percent of the materials.
The aluminum is recycled by Norsk Hydro, while the “black mass” powder is sold to battery makers.
“This is the black gold that gives us life,” said Glenn Ostbye, the acting head of Hydrovolt, leading a tour of the plant clad in a safety helmet and goggles.
The “black gold” is touted as eco-friendly as it comes from the recycling process rather than being mined in faraway countries.
“Battery recycling is, in many ways, an alternative to mines. We have sort of built a mine above ground,” Hydrovolt director of operations Andreas Frydensvang said.
“A battery can be transformed into a new battery to infinity,” he said.
The recycling also helps boost Europe’s independence when it comes to critical minerals, with the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine highlighting the continent’s problematic dependence on imported raw materials.
In Europe, “we have big markets for products, but we don’t actually have so much of our own resources,” Julia Poliscanova, head of electric mobility at the non-governmental organization Transport & Environment.
“Globally speaking, we’re not a mining superpower for copper, cobalt or nickel,” she said, adding that recycling waste was an obvious option.
“And you can recycle a lot quicker than you can start up a new mine,” she said.
Transport & Environment, a European clean transport campaign group, said that recycling old batteries could cover between at least 8 and 12 percent of Europe’s critical mineral needs in 2030, and between 12 and 14 percent in 2035.
The European Parliament recently adopted regulations aimed at making batteries more sustainable and more easily recyclable.
However, Europe also needs to stop exporting its precious “black mass” to third countries, primarily China and South Korea, and develop its own hydrometallurgic processing plants, Poliscanova said.
This other crucial link in the recycling chain, which makes it possible to extract the metals contained in the powder, is still low-scale in Europe, handled only by a few companies such as Revolt in Sweden and Eramet SA in France.
Government subsidies are also needed so that the many planned battery plants can see the light of day, creating an ecosystem favorable to recyclers, Poliscanova said.
The Fredrikstad plant is a pilot project and the blueprint is expected to be exported, with Hydrovolt planning a second site “in a year or two.”
“The most important thing for us is the degree of adoption of electric cars, so that there is a reservoir of end-of-life batteries,” Frydensvang said. “We’re therefore looking at countries like Germany, France and a little in the United States.”
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
Taiwan’s official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) last month rose 0.2 percentage points to 54.2, in a second consecutive month of expansion, thanks to front-loading demand intended to avoid potential US tariff hikes, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. While short-term demand appeared robust, uncertainties rose due to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictable trade policy, CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) told a news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s economy this year would be characterized by high-level fluctuations and the volatility would be wilder than most expect, Lien said Demand for electronics, particularly semiconductors, continues to benefit from US technology giants’ effort
‘SWASTICAR’: Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s close association with Donald Trump has prompted opponents to brand him a ‘Nazi’ and resulted in a dramatic drop in sales Demonstrators descended on Tesla Inc dealerships across the US, and in Europe and Canada on Saturday to protest company chief Elon Musk, who has amassed extraordinary power as a top adviser to US President Donald Trump. Waving signs with messages such as “Musk is stealing our money” and “Reclaim our country,” the protests largely took place peacefully following fiery episodes of vandalism on Tesla vehicles, dealerships and other facilities in recent weeks that US officials have denounced as terrorism. Hundreds rallied on Saturday outside the Tesla dealership in Manhattan. Some blasted Musk, the world’s richest man, while others demanded the shuttering of his