True 2 Materials (T2M) is transforming electric vehicle (EV) battery recycling with its carbon-emissions free, Total Material Recovery™ (TMR) process.
True 2 Materials (T2M) applies nanotechnology materials and know-how to solve global problems at scale. T2M is supplanting the high-cost, low-value, traditional recycling methods for Electric Vehicle (EV) batteries with a low-cost, high-value process that will greatly change the economic and environmental calculus for the automotive industry. By significantly reducing and possibly eliminating the need for further processing before returning these outputs to virgin cells, manufacturing costs can be greatly reduced.
What is Total Material Recovery™?
The company’s Total Material Recovery™ (TMR) process is a novel, CO2-neutral method to extract the entirety of constituent materials from EV batteries. The process is clean, flexible, and cost-effective. TMR is an entirely new recycling method, developed from first principles, that enables the recovery of higher value forms of all the materials from all the parts of an EV battery.
Traditional EV battery recycling focuses on methods to retrieve the highest-value cathode materials of cobalt and nickel, often damaging the valuable, highly processed anode (carbon), lithium, electrolyte, and cathode oxides in the process. The cathode oxides are recovered as sulfates, destroying both the processed value and the environment. As the outputs are recovered one by one (serial recovery), it necessitates a long, expensive chain of tanks, piping, heating, and noxious chemicals. It is also slow. This method of serial recovery is utilised not only for recycling, but during the manufacture of cells as well, as manufacturing-scrap material is shipped off-site for processing.
True 2 Materials reduces, and potentially eliminates, the need to process these outputs before immediately putting them into a new battery cathode or anode. This would enable any cell maker to process scrap onsite. The process is clean, flexible, and cost-effective, as instead of processing serially, the outputs are separated from each other in batches (parallel recovery). This enables the recovery of higher-value forms of all constituent materials from all parts of the battery, and reduces its physical footprint by order of magnitude.
As T2M does not utilise textbook recycling methodologies, it offers an alternative that provides maximal material recovery while preserving value. TMR requires low levels of capital expenditure and has a low per-ton processing cost at the margin. Traditional recyclers claim high percentages of recovered materials while ignoring both the damage to those materials and the non-cathode materials. They destroy the value of anode carbon materials. TMR returns spherical graphite, ready for the next battery and reduces oxides to sulfates. TMR recovers oxides as oxides, never going back to sulfates in the process.
Total Material Recovery™ works with both end-of-life and with defective cells and materials in the manufacturing process. The process closes the loop and allows clients to reach their circular economy-related targets, effectively turning recycling into manufacturing.
The key differentiators of TMR:
- Higher yields, with better quality, EV-grade reusable outputs
- Small or massive scale can be done at a profit (reduced CO2 intensive shipping)
- Low capital expenditure costs
- Low operating cost at the margin
- Complete capture, no lost materials (gases, electrolytes, anode, cathode etc.)
- No CO2 emitted
- No use of high temperatures or foundries
- PH-neutral effluent that can be reused or easily disposed
T2M’s goal is to partner with major automotive manufacturers and cell makers committed to aggressively managing their supply chains, maximising the value of recovered materials, and reducing their environmental footprint. They believe the best solution for this problem is expressed by the difference in a simple equation: total value of materials recovered – total cost of recovery. You will win with TMR, and it isn’t even close.
All currently existing recycling methods are far from the goal of complete circular material usage. Further, the volume that recyclers can currently process is but a small percentage of projected demand and existing methods are expensive to scale.
True 2 Materials Total Material RecoveryTM will allow companies to meet their highest targets of material reuse while reducing both CO2 emissions and the need for raw material mining. The environmental advantages are compelling. The process scales to meet future production, and the economics are solid.
- Inquiries: Richard Carlow, CEO, inquiry@true2materials.com
