Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the seven winners of Phase II of the Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Prize. The phased prize competition is designed to help find innovative solutions to collecting, storing, and transporting discarded lithium-ion batteries for eventual recycling. The goal is to develop and demonstrate processes that, when scaled, have the potential to profitably capture 90% of all discarded or spent lithium-based batteries in the United States, and re-introduce key materials into the U.S. supply chain.
Fourteen teams participated in Phase II of the Prize, which focused on building industry partnerships to design, simulate, and prototype a proof-of-concept solution. Phase II winners will each receive a $357,000 cash prize, in addition to $100,000 in non-cash vouchers to use at National Labs and approved organizations within the American-Made Challenges Network. These winners advance to the third and final phase of the Prize, pilot validation.
The winning teams are:
| Li Industries (Blacksburg, VA) | Li Industries is developing a machine learning-based, automated Smart Battery Sorting System capable of accurately and efficiently sorting and separating batteries by several characteristics, including chemical composition, size, weight, and packaging type. End of life LIBs sorted this way can be fed into direct recycling processes that produce rejuvenated battery materials more cheaply and efficiently. |
| OnTo Technology (Bend, OR) | OnTo’s deactivate, identify, sort, and cut (DISC) solution provides safe and efficient end-of-life processing of waste batteries by sorting LIBs by cathode chemistry. The DISC locations will be implemented across the country to minimize hazardous shipping. |
| Powering the Future (Glendale, WI) | Clarios is leveraging the existing network of collection for lead-acid batteries to collect end of life LIBs. This concept will apply innovative technologies to handle mixed EOL batteries to identify, separate LIBs from lead-acid, and ultimately optimize the network’s value. |
| Renewance (Chicago, IL) | The Renewance Connect digital platform tracks and manages LIBs throughout their full life cycle. This asset tracking and marketplace concept optimizes reverse logistics and recycling activities by improving access to and utilizing existing infrastructure for decommissioning, collection, warehousing, sorting, transportation, and recycling services. |
| Smartville (San Diego, CA) | Smartville is deploying distributed heterogeneous unifying battery (HUB) facilities to reduce costs and create value in the reverse logistics supply chain. LIBs will be fully balanced, conditioned, and certified within the Smartville HUB facility before being repurposed for secondary use or shipped to recyclers. |
Team Portables (Seattle, WA) | Reward to Recycle is a consumer engagement smartphone app where consumers learn how to earn a reward for recycling their battery. This app uses a digital identity to track portable LIBs and support final recycling. |
| Titan Advanced Energy Solutions (Sommerville, MA) | Battago is Titan’s Battery Market Intelligence platform built to generate, aggregate, and connect battery data to create a transparent marketplace and bridge the gap between battery owners, integrators, and end of life recyclers. This platform combines hardware and software capabilities to deliver battery identification through visual recognition, diagnostics, and rapid ultrasonic testing. |
The Battery Recycling Prize support DOE’s Energy Storage Grand Challenge, which draws on the extensive research capabilities of the DOE National Laboratories, universities, and industry to accelerate the development of energy-storage technologies and sustain American global leadership in the energy storage technologies of the future.
The $5.5 million Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Prize was announced in January 2019. The Prize is sponsored by the Vehicle Technologies Office and the Advanced Manufacturing Office. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) serves as the administrator of the Prize. To learn more about the Battery Recycling Prize, please visit AmericanMadeChallenges.org/BatteryRecycling.
