Umicore Group has announced plans to build an industrial scale recycling facility for end-of-life rechargeable batteries in Hoboken, Belgium. The investment will enable Umicore to deal with the expected growth in the availability of a host of rechargeable batteries, including lithium-ion, lithium-polymer and nickel metal hydride rechargeable batteries. The use of such batteries is set to grow substantially, particularly as a result of the increasing numbers of electric vehicles.
The company notes that by 2012, in the European Union, 25 percent of all portable batteries will have to be collected and recycled. More promising, that number is slated to increase to 45 percent by 2016.Increasingly stringent legislation is also placing a heavy premium on the efficient and eco-friendly recycling of end-of-life materials, such as used batteries.
Umicore currently operates a small scale facility which treats spent batteries that come primarily from portable electronic equipment. The new facility will have an initial annual capacity of 7,000 metric tons.
The company plans on investing around $25 million on the plant. It is expected to start operating by the first half of 2011. The facility will use Umicore’s ultra high temperature smelting technology.
Currently, the process allows for the recycling of cobalt, nickel, copper and other metals and is fully in line with Umicore’s strategy of closing the materials loop. The scale-up of this new ultra high temperature smelting technology will also enable Umicore to test its suitability for recycling new streams of materials.
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