Today, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the eight winning teams of the Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Prize Breakthrough Contest, awarding five Track 1: New Competitors and three Track 2: Verified Competitors for their proposed solutions to address challenges within the lithium-ion battery recycling landscape. Each of the winning solutions demonstrate processes that, when scaled, contribute to DOE’s goal to strengthen the national critical mineral supply chain through battery recycling.
Track 1: New Competitors
Rose City Robotics – Portland, OR
ReJoule – Signal Hill, CA
BinIt – New York, NY
Glimpse Engineering – Somerville, MA
NAECO – Peachtree City, GA
Track 2: Verified Competitors
Li Industries – Pineville, NC
Renewance – Elmhurst, IL
Smartville – Carlsbad, CA
This prize is designed to accelerate solutions within the battery recycling industry, encouraging novel ideas to increase recycling efficiency and reduce America’s dependence on foreign-sourced lithium-ion battery materials. These solutions will contribute toward developing the critical infrastructure needed to efficiently collect, sort, transport, sort, and process spent or discarded lithium-ion batteries from consumers to recyclers, across various applications. Each winning team will receive $200,000 in recognition of their innovative proposals.
“This contest showcases the ingenuity required to maximize the value and useful life of critical materials,” said Assistant Secretary of Energy (EERE) Audrey Robertson. “DOE is proud to support these talented contestants as they turn their groundbreaking ideas into scalable solutions that will fortify our country’s critical mineral supply chains.”
