"Our collaboration provides an exciting opportunity to accelerate our R&D and to boost the performance of EV batteries (energy density) and recyclability while lowering costs for automakers and battery manufacturers," says Philippe Meyer, senior vice president and chief technology officer of Novelis Inc. "But we want to go beyond and partner closely with Georgia Tech to help transform our industry to reach committed objectives toward sustainability." 

The new strategic programs that are part of the extended partnership include circular economy solutions or decarbonization of the industrial footprint and the promotion of entrepreneurship and incubation of new ventures. Novelis says these new programs will help to accelerate the commercialization of new products, resulting in broader relationships with Georgia Tech's business and commercialization groups.

"To keep advancing the aluminum industry toward the circular economy, we must increase the pace of innovation and develop new solutions that demonstrate aluminum's superior sustainability benefits," says Raj Gopalaswamy, global technology director of new domains, Novelis Inc. "Through research partnerships with world-leading institutions like Georgia Tech, we can fulfill the growing needs for aluminum applications that help our customers meet their sustainability goals faster and more efficiently."

"Collaboration between academia and industry will help speed the development of transformative solutions to meet the sustainability challenges we face today," says Shreyes Melkote, executive director of the Novelis Innovation Hub, Georgia Tech. "We look forward to expanding our partnership with Novelis to address its critical scientific, technological and workforce needs by leveraging the wide-ranging expertise and talent of Georgia Tech faculty and students in sustainable technologies, advanced materials and manufacturing, artificial intelligence, data sciences and robotics." 

Julia Kubanek, vice president for interdisciplinary research at Georgia Tech, says Novelis is a critical partner for Georgia Tech to accelerate product innovation across multiple sectors.

"As an Institute, we remain committed to our vision to foster world-class partnerships as we collaborate with Novelis," Kubanek says. "Our mutual interests in sustainability, clean energy and creative design of materials make this research partnership especially exciting for us."

Novelis is a subsidiary of Hindalco Industries Ltd, an industry leader in aluminum and copper, and the metals flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai.

Saudi-Arabia based petrochemical firm Aramco has announced what it calls a major expansion of its industrial investment program, Aramco Namaat, with the signing of 22 new memoranda of understanding (MoUs) and one joint venture (JV) agreement focusing on four aspects of its business: sustainability, technology, industrial and energy services and advanced materials.

Namaat translates loosely as “collective growth” in Arabic, Aramco says, adding that the program aims to create new value and drive economic expansion and diversification.

Among the announced MOUs were two with a clear recycling or waste management aspect. Aramco, Netherlands-based Shell & AMG Recycling and Saudi Arabia-based United Company for Industry have signed what the oil firm calls “a trilateral MoU on metals reclamation and catalyst manufacturing.”

Another MOU has been reached with France-based Veolia, which Aramco calls “an exclusive MOU to confirm the commercial feasibility of establishing a world-class integrated waste management company, alongside a strategic indigenous knowledge stakeholder.”

Aramco lists sustainability as one of the four drivers of its Nammat program, saying sustainability from its perspective involves maintaining its low upstream carbon intensity level, implementing circular economy concepts to reduce waste and striving to pursue emissions reductions through technologies such as carbon capture.

Martin Weiss, a long-time employee of Austria-based sorting technology provider Redwave, has been named as the new chief operating officer of Atlanta-based Redwave Solutions US LLC. Weiss has been serving as Redwave’s global sales manager and expert for metal recycling.

Redwave, established in Austria in 2004, says it “quickly became apparent that there was great potential for Redwave sensor-based sorting machines in America.”

Stefan Steiner has managed the operations of Redwave Solutions US on an interim basis “and has since not only strengthened the American location but has also created a reliable and motivated team,” the company states.

After four and a half years in the United States, Steiner will take on new responsibilities at the company’s Austrian headquarters, involving expanding international business areas and promoting the firm’s service and support area. “I am very honored by this vote of confidence from the management, and I will put my full commitment into achieving our goals,” Steiner says of his new role.

As of July 1, Weiss has become chief operating officer of the U.S. subsidiary. “In my past responsibilities at Redwave, I was working in different departments,” says Weiss. “This versatile knowledge gives me confidence for this honorable new position. I am excited and look forward to adding more value to the team and appreciate the trust for this opportunity from the management.”

Weiss says he is ready to take over a team that includes administration, sales and marketing and a factory-trained technical staff responsible for service and maintenance that has more than 80 years of combined experience in the field of electromechanical engineering and installation monitoring.

In the metal recycling market, Redwave says more than 100 of its XRF/C machines have been sold. That unit, the company says, can be used in other applications including glass sorting, plastics sorting, paper sorting, mixed waste sorting and the processing of RDF.

At EMR, we have always adapted to innovations in technology and the materials that manufacturers use to deliver them. There have been few bigger shifts than the current evolution of the car industry, which is leaving behind the combustion engine in favor of electric vehicles (EVs).

Around the world, drivers are migrating to EVs because they want to mitigate the carbon impact of the vehicles they drive. And that’s great news because individuals wanting to do the right thing has caused one of the biggest changes to the automotive industry in a century.

However, with the United Kingdom set to ban the sale of fossil fuel-run cars by 2030, there is another challenge that the industry must confront – the embodied carbon emissions created by building these technologically advanced vehicles.

If manufacturers are to create a generation of truly decarbonized EVs, they need to work hard to reduce the amount of materials they use from primary sources extracted from ore that is dug out of the ground. These include steel used in body components, the valuable metals such as copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium that are used in batteries or the neodymium rare earth material that is found in EV drive motors.

This is where EMR, as one of the U.K.’s leading metal recyclers, has an opportunity to play an essential role. The advanced technology – and components that allow these cars to perform to such a high standard – are significantly different to those of the diesel and gasoline-fueled cars that have run on Britain’s roads for decades.

As recyclers, this creates a challenge.

If we put an EV through a traditional shredder, the rare earth magnets contained in its electronic systems would get stuck to other materials or shatter and be lost, while the lithium-based battery could catch fire. We need a different approach to recycling the vehicles of the future, and that’s what EMR is currently developing.

We’re already busy creating a new supply chain, RECOVAS, to process end-of-life EV batteries. This work is funded by the U.K. government’s Advanced Propulsion Centre.

Alongside car manufacturers Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and Bentley – and utilizing the expertise of the University of Warwick, the Health and Safety Executive, the U.K. Battery Industrialisation Centre and two re-use partners – EMR is making sure EV batteries take the most efficient and sustainable end-of-life path, whether that’s remanufacturing, re-use or recycling.

This is just one piece of the puzzle.

Another significant challenge is separating out the components of EVs, such as electric motors, which may not have been built with end-of-life in mind. The same goes for these cars’ computer systems and sensors.

With many of the parts bonded or welded together, it is a complex job simply to separate the main components of these vehicles for recycling.

Eventually, this might get easier as vehicle designers start to build cars with recycling in mind – but the current generation of tough-to-process EVs will be coming to our sites for the next 15 years, so we need to be ready.

Thankfully, once this stage is complete, EMR’s decades of experience will really start to show. We can learn from many of the processes that we use to process nonferrous metals and plastics as we develop the techniques to recycle the components that we extract from EVs. 

And this is also where the entire supply chain begins to see benefits, both in terms of the sustainability and low carbon impact of EMR’s recycled materials and the resource security they provide.

Take steel, a key component of EVs, but also a metal that EMR already processes in huge quantities. 

Our work with the Carbon Trust shows the average carbon impact of making a metric ton of steel by conventional processing routes using mostly primary iron ore is about 1.8 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. If the industry uses recycled materials to create steel in a modern electric arc furnace (EAF), this is reduced to 560 kilos (1,230 pounds) – 26 kilos (57 pounds) of which comes from EMR’s recycling processes and transport.

As EMR and the rest of the steel supply chain reduces its carbon impact on the journey to net zero in the years ahead, EMR estimates that the carbon impact of making steel from recycled steel could fall further to around 250 kilos (551 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent per metric ton of steel. This will increase the sustainability advantage of recycled steel over prime still further.

If we can achieve these cuts for a metal such as steel by improving our recycling processes, the carbon savings for materials like cobalt will be much higher.

What’s also becoming clear is how well placed EMR is to meet the challenges ahead.

The scale of our operations and our connections to international markets mean we’re already experienced at finding high-value outlets for the materials EV recycling will produce. Meanwhile, we operate a network of 50 Authorised Treatment Facilities (ATFs) which process end-of-life vehicles around the U.K.

While our EV recycling capabilities will initially only operate at seven of these sites, EMR is ready to roll this out to all ATF-equipped sites as the volume of end-of-life EVs increases in the years ahead.

As EVs become ubiquitous, every part of the automotive industry faces new challenges – from carmakers to dealerships, oil companies with networks of service stations, to mechanics whose skills will need to change.

The EV revolution is coming and EMR is evolving its business to make sure it’s ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

The author is the United Kingdom end-of-life vehicle manager for U.K.-based EMR Ltd., which also has operations in the United States.