At the end of life (EoL) of a Battery, the EoL Battery contains precious metals. Mining these metals inherently poses ecological challenges and is sometimes conducted under unethical conditions.
Cleantron actively investigates, collaborates, and invests in ethical, environmentally, and financially sustainable methods for recovering these precious metals from EoL batteries.
First of all, the EoL Battery must be returned to the OEM that produced and sold the application in which the battery was used. This can also be a party representing the OEM. For example, in the Netherlands, EoL Batteries are now collected by STIBAT (Stichting Batterijen) and ARN (Auto Recycling Nederland).
The EoL battery is classified as hazardous material and requires expensive transportation according to the ADR (European Agreement concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Road) guidelines and storage with the right pre-cautions. It is therefore that it is Cleantron’s primary objective is to focus on the development of technology to limit the transport costs by making the EoL Battery non-hazardous as local as possible.
Cleantron is working on the development of a compact discharging and shredding system. Being compact it can be operated locally and turn “hazardous e-Waste” into “non-hazardous e-Waste”.
The residue, safely pulverized batteries is metal waste that can be transported as non-hazardous e-Waste to a dedicated centralised furnace where valuable metals can be retracted. This concerns materials such as Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese and Aluminum that can be used to produce Li-ion Cells.
Cleantron is currently developing a “sale back pilot” with her European Cell Suppliers. By this we not only solve a problem of our customers, we also create value in the chain, turning a problem into an opportunity.
