Latest / The Manufacturing Podcast with Fexingo: Factories, Supply Chains, and Industrial Business / How a Singapore Factory Recycles Lithium-Ion Battery Black Mass
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a factory in Singapore that's doing something a lot of people in the battery world thought was borderline impossible until very recently: it's taking the crushed-up remains of spent lithium-ion batteries — what the industry calls black mass — and turning it back into high-purity battery-grade metals at a commercial scale. Luna: Black mass. That's the dark, powdery mix after you shred the cells, right? Contains all the cathode metals, graphite, electrolyte residue — a real chemical soup. Lucas: Exactly that. And historically, the recycling industry has had a tough time with it. Most of the world's lithium-ion battery recycling is done via pyrometallurgy — you basically melt everything down. But when you do that, you lose the lithium, you get a low-grade alloy of cobalt, nickel, and copper, and the energy cost is enormous. Lucas: The Singapore factory, operated by a company called Green Li-ion, is doing something different. They use a hydrometallurgical process — think chemical leaching in solution — and they claim they can recover over 95 percent of the lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, and output them as separate, high-purity powders that can go straight into new cathode production. Luna: I've read about hydrometallurgical recycling in labs before, but scaling it to commercial volumes with black mass has been the hurdle. What's their capacity? Lucas: Their current line can process up to 20 tons of black mass per day. That might not sound like much compared to a mine, but consider this: those 20 tons contain roughly the equivalent of the cathode metals from about 20,000 electric vehicle battery packs — or hundreds of thousands of smartphone batteries. And it's not just the volume, it's the purity. Lucas: They're producing lithium phosphate, cobalt sulfate, nickel sulfate, and manganese sulfate at purities above 99.5 percent. That's direct precursor material for new batteries. You're not downcycling into lower-grade products. Luna: So the economics start to make sense, especially when commodity prices are volatile. If you can recover lithium at a cost below mining it — or even at parity — and you avoid the geopolitical risks of sourcing from concentrated supply chains, that's a huge advantage. Lucas: Green Li-ion says their process can undercut the cost of virgin mined materials by roughly 30 percent, depending on current market prices. And because the factory is modular — each line is a self-contained unit roughly the size of a shipping container — they can scale incrementally. They've already deployed units in Australia and are planning installations in the US and Europe. Luna: That modular approach is interesting. Instead of building one giant centralised plant, you put the recycling where the scrap is — near battery factories, near collection points. That lowers transportation costs and carbon footprint for shipping heavy black mass. Lucas: Exactly. And it solves another practical problem: black mass is classified as hazardous waste in most jurisdictions. The more you move it around, the more regulatory friction you get. So having a small-footprint recycling unit that can sit next to a battery factory or a dismantling centre is a smart industrial design choice. Luna: Let's talk about the actual chemistry for a second. The challenge with black mass is that it's not just the metals — it's the graphite, the binders, the electrolyte residue that can foul the leaching process. How do they get around that? Lucas: They've developed a proprietary pre-treatment step that removes the organic components — binders and electrolyte — before the hydrometallurgical digestion. Then they use a series of selective precipitation and solvent extraction steps to separate each metal. The key innovation is that they do it in a continuous flow, not batch, which keeps costs down and quality consistent. Lucas: One detail I found striking: they don't use extreme temperatures or pressures. The whole process operates below 100 degrees Celsius at atmospheric pressure. That's a big deal for energy consumption and for safety. Luna: So it's not a 'burn it all' kind of solution. It's more like a wet chemistry lab scaled up a thousand times. What about the graphite? Does that get recovered? Lucas: Currently the graphite ends up in a residue stream — they don't yet purify it to battery-grade, but they're working on a second-generation process that recovers graphite as well. Right now the residual carbon can be used in lower-grade applications, or it can be sent to cement kilns as a fuel substitute. But the economics are really driven by the cathode metals — lithium, cobalt, nickel — which are the high-value components. Luna: And that calculus only gets better as battery chemistry evolves. The newer high-nickel cathodes — NMC 811, NMC 9.5.5 — they have more value per kilogram than the older, lower-nickel chemistries. So recycling becomes more attractive over time, not less. Lucas: That's a smart observation. And it points to why investors are taking this seriously. Green Li-ion has raised over 30 million dollars so far, and they're backed by some big names in the energy and materials space. The Singapore factory is a demonstration that the technology works at commercial throughput. Lucas: But I think the bigger story is what this means for the battery supply chain as a whole. Right now, the majority of lithium-ion battery recycling happens in China, using pyrometallurgy. If hydrometallurgical recycling can be deployed modularly in other regions, it changes the geopolitics of critical minerals. Luna: You reduce reliance on a single country for both mining and recycling. That's a resilience argument that resonates with automakers and governments. The Inflation Reduction Act in the US, for instance, has tax credits for battery materials that are recycled domestically. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just policy. The volume of end of life batteries is about to explode. The first wave of mass-market EVs from the mid-2010s is starting to come off the road. We're talking tens of thousands of tons of black mass needing a home every year, just from the US and Europe alone. Lucas: So having a proven, scalable, economically viable recycling technology ready before that wave hits is critical. Green Li-ion's approach is one of the most promising I've seen. Luna: You know, this kind of deep-dive on a specific industrial process — it's exactly the kind of thing that makes this podcast useful. We get to see how a real company is solving a real problem, not just talking about it. Lucas: Thanks for saying that. And it's why listener support matters — episodes like this take time to research and produce, and we keep the show ad-free because we believe in delivering value without interruption. If today's conversation moved your thinking forward in some small way, the way you can help keep it going is simple: buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: It's a small gesture that makes a big difference. We don't run ads, we don't do sponsorships — it's just the content and the community. So if you find value here, that's the link. Lucas: Alright — back to the chemistry. One thing I didn't mention: Green Li-ion's process also handles the so-called 'black mass from manufacturing scrap.' Battery factories produce a surprising amount of off-spec cathodes and electrode scrap during production — sometimes 5 to 10 percent of throughput. That material is cleaner than end of life batteries, but it's still a waste stream. Their system can take that too. Luna: So you've got two feedstocks: pre-consumer scrap and post-consumer end of life. That doubles the potential volume and improves the economics because manufacturing scrap is more consistent. Lucas: Right. And it's a growing stream as gigafactories ramp up. For every 100 gigawatt-hours of battery production, you're looking at roughly 5 to 10 gigawatt-hours worth of scrap. That's a lot of material that currently gets shipped to recyclers at a cost. If you can recycle it on-site or nearby, you save logistics and create a closed-loop supply chain within the factory ecosystem. Luna: That's the vision — a circular economy where batteries are made, used, and then disassembled and the materials go straight back into new batteries. No downcycling, no mining for new metals for a long time. Lucas: It's not a pipe dream anymore. The Singapore factory is proof that the technology works at commercial scale. The next step is cost — can they get the process cheap enough to compete with virgin materials even when commodity prices are low? They say they're already there on a landed-cost basis, but we'll see how that holds over the next few years. Luna: And that's the bottom line for any manufacturing innovation: does it pencil out at scale? The chemistry is elegant, but the business model has to work. What's your take — do you think this becomes the dominant recycling method, or does pyrometallurgy have a role to play for certain chemistries? Lucas: I think both will coexist for a while. Pyrometallurgy is simpler and handles mixed or contaminated inputs, but it's less efficient for high-value recovery. Hydrometallurgy is more selective but requires cleaner feed and more process control. For the high-nickel, high-cobalt chemistries that dominate EVs, hydrometallurgy is the clear winner. For lower-value chemistries like lithium iron phosphate, pyrometallurgy might still make sense. Lucas: But the trend is toward hydrometallurgy. Every major battery recycler — Redwood Materials, Li-Cycle, Retriev — is investing in it. Green Li-ion's modular approach gives them an edge in speed to market and flexibility. Luna: Alright, so if I'm a listener who wants to follow this space, what should I watch for in the next 12 months? Lucas: Watch for announcements about their US and European factory deployments. They've said they'll have units operational in Oklahoma and Norway by mid-2027. If those ramp up successfully, it validates the modular model beyond Singapore. Also watch for the graphite recovery process — if they can make that work at commercial purity, it adds another revenue stream and closes the loop entirely. Luna: And watch the commodity price of lithium. If it stays low, recycling economics get tighter. But with EV adoption still growing, the volume of end of life batteries is only going up. The recyclers who survive the commodity cycle will own a critical piece of the supply chain. Lucas: That's the long view. And it's why we cover manufacturing innovation — because the companies that figure out these processes today are the ones that shape the industrial landscape for decades. The Singapore factory is a small operation in a global sense, but it represents a big shift in how we think about materials. Luna: From black mass to battery grade — that's the kind of alchemy that actually works. Thanks for unpacking it, Lucas. Lucas: Great conversation. That's it for today's episode of The Manufacturing Podcast. We'll be back next time with another deep dive into the factories and processes that run the world.