American Battery Technology Company (OTCQB:ABML) (ABTC) said it has been awarded a US$10 million additional competitive grant under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to demonstrate and commercialize next-generation techniques for its lithium-ion battery recycling processes to produce low-cost and low-environmental impact domestic battery materials.
ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert said that similar to the continuous development of lithium-ion battery technologies, the recycling side needs continuous improvement to stay at the forefront of global innovation.
"We are excited to work with our diverse array of world-class partners throughout the private industry, public university, and government laboratory sectors in order to optimize and commercialize these next generation of low-cost, low-environmental impact, and domestically implemented advanced techniques," Melsert said in a statement.
READ: American Battery Technology Company says fiscal first quarter 2023 has $20.9M in cash; operating costs down by almost 90%
ABTC said it’s one of five companies selected for competitive funding under the battery recycling portion of the 'Electric Drive Vehicle Battery Recycling and Second Life Applications' opportunity from the US Department of Energy (DOE).
ABTC said it, and its partners were awarded close to $10 million to validate, test, and deploy three disruptive advanced separation and processing technologies in its existing lithium-ion battery recycling pilot plant in Fernley, Nevada.
ABTC said it will work with Novonix Group, University of Nevada, Reno, University of Utah, North Carolina State University, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Idaho National Laboratory, and also rely on Dainen Material and Novonix Group for additional downstream material validation.
The company said it and its project partners will contribute an additional $10 million in cost-share resources, bringing the total project investment to $20 million.
The government funding will accelerate the demonstration and integration of next-generation advanced recycling techniques into this processing train at the Fernley, Nevada pilot plant, according to ABTC.
The company said it has already developed enhanced separation and processing techniques that allow for the recovery of additional products and further reduction of energy and water consumption and life cycle greenhouse gas emissions.
Through this DOE-supported project, ABTC said it and its partners will validate and optimize each of these technologies at the bench scale, then manufacture qualification batches of these products for evaluation and testing by downstream partners, followed by the scale-up of these advanced systems for integration into ABTC's recycling pilot plant.
Last month, the company said it was selected for an additional DOE competitive award through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for approximately $57 million to support the construction of its commercial-scale primary lithium hydroxide manufacturing facility to develop its unconventional, sedimentary claystone resource near Tonopah, Nev.
Also, ABTC said it, in collaboration with DuPont (NYSE:DD) and the University of Nevada, Reno, was awarded a $4.5 million grant from the DOE in 2021 to build and operate a multi-ton per day demonstration-scale system to accelerate the commercialization and scale-up of lithium manufacturing technology.
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