Recycled EV Batteries Are Coming From Redwood Materials

If the EV momentum is to be kept up so that America can truly buck our century-old oil addiction, we'll need new, bigger supplies of battery materials than we've ever seen before. And, on the flip side, if we're going to put more EVs on the road, we'll need something to do with all those big batteries when their useful lives end.

Battery recycling, besides ensuring aged-out batteries start crowding landfills, is key to meeting our exploding battery supply needs. Redwood Materials is at the forefront of this developing industry. This week, the company has made a significant step forward in its plans to help domestic production of batteries from recycled materials as it has begun construction on its Cathode Active Material building at its Nevada facility.

Cathodes are one of the fundamental components of any battery, providing the negative side of a battery system. On lithium-ion batteries, during charge and discharge, lithium ions travel between the cathode and the anode across an electrolyte layer that provides insulation to keep the two halves of the battery from shorting out.

It's the cathode that defines the composition of the battery, and so it's the piece that contains the bulk of the rare metals used in battery construction. This includes elements like lithium, of course, plus cobalt and nickel, materials which are often expensive or otherwise challenging to source. Most of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for example, which has seen numerous instances of child labor and human rights abuses. Meanwhile, Indonesia is the world's largest Nickel producer, where its mining has had a huge toll on the local environment. 

These are just a few examples from the dirty side of EVs. Beyond that, there's the substantial cost and environmental impact of shipping those materials around the world. By providing a domestic source for cathode materials, Redwood not only provides a conflict-free (at least secondary) source of these materials, but further establishes itself as a key part of the developing EV battery ecosystem in the United States. 

Redwood aims for its supplied cathode materials to be composed of 30 percent recycled nickel, 30 percent recycled lithium, and 100 percent recycled cobalt. Redwood's efforts to date have been primarily focused on breaking down batteries and extracting their raw materials. Batteries that are broken or too tired for effective use are manually split apart, and the valuable elements within are processed. 

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Most recyclers focus on turning those battery internals into so-called "black mass," or a metal-rich substance that can be processed and refined to pull out specific elements needed for battery production. Cathode active materials, or CAM, is a further step beyond that, refined for direct use in battery manufacturing.

With the addition of cathode production, Redwood Materials can now begin to provide a key component for battery construction. So far, Redwood has signed contracts with Panasonic and Toyota to provide cathode materials.

The cathode production building that's now under construction is the first of five. Redwood says this first building will eventually produce 20 gigawatt-hours worth of cathode materials every year. Once all five are completed, the anticipated annual output is 100 GWh, or enough for 1.3 million EVs.

Panasonic will reportedly use these materials in its De Soto, Kansas, battery factory. Toyota, meanwhile, will also reportedly use the materials in its own American battery factory, currently under construction in North Carolina, although that is still to be fully confirmed. Both are slated to start production in 2025. Redwood Materials says that Panasonic is first on the list to start receiving cathode active materials, deliveries of which will begin by the end of next year.