The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Friday transferred cost-effective lithium-ion battery recycling know-how to 9 recycling firms and 9 extra obtained letters of intent at Niti Aayog.
MeitY developed this know-how in partnership with the Government of Telangana and trade associate, Greenko Energies Pvt. Ltd., as half of the “Centre of Excellence on E-waste Management” established at the Centre for Material for Electronics technique (C-MET), Hyderabad.
Industries and start-ups which received the technology include Besa Li-ion Batteries Pvt Ltd, Mahalaxmi Metalalloys (India) Pvt Ltd, Nexus Renewable Solutions, Remine India Pvt Ltd, Re-Sustainability Ltd, San Automobile Industries Pvt Ltd, SAM-VIK Marketing, SPEGSY Pvt Ltd and Ved Prakash Vinay Kumar.
The companies which received the letter of intent are CENALL E-waste, Eco Recycling Ltd, Hayat E-Recyclers Pvt Ltd, Elgreen Recycling Pvt Ltd, Project Engineering Service & Consultancy (PESCONS), SBS Paper Recycling Pvt Ltd, Ush India Recycler Pvt Ltd, Wagulde Industries Pvt Ltd and ZP Technologies Pvt Ltd.
The event was attended by Alkesh Kumar Sharma, Secretary at Meity, Bhuvnesh Kumar, Additional Secretary at Meity, BVR Subrahmanyam, CEO of Niti Aayog, and others. Principal Secretary of the Telangana Government Jayesh Rajan also attended the technology transfer event virtually and urged all nine technology recipients to set up facilities in Hyderabad as early as possible.
This indigenous technology can process various types of discarded Li-ion batteries, recovering more than 95 per cent of the lithium (Li), cobalt (Co), manganese (Mn), and nickel (Ni) contents in the form of their respective oxides or carbonates with a purity of around 98 per cent.
The recycling process includes leaching, followed by hierarchical selective extraction of metal values using solvent extraction. These secondary raw materials might be employed in battery manufacture or other future uses.
Dr R Ratheesh, Director at C-MET Hyderabad, during the presentation of the technology, mentioned Niti Aayog’s report according to which by 2030, the country’s overall lithium battery storage requirement will be around 600 GWh and about 125 GWh of lithium batteries will be ready for recycling.
Citing the report, Ratheesh said the black mass (used to describe e-waste that consists cobalt, nickel, copper and lithium) amount will be 3,60,000 tons.
Furthermore, he said: “Currently all the black masses are going to China and Korea for recycling. So I think we have started the recycling initiative at the right time and I request the authorities to put a ban on the export of these materials so that we can support Indian industries to come out with more recycling initiatives.”
Niti Aayog CEO, while applauding MeitY and C-MET, also echoed similar thoughts and indicated that the time has come to reduce the dependency on other countries as the recycling technology provides the option to use raw materials already available inside the borders, instead of importing from other countries.
“I compliment the Telangana government for taking the lead in enabling the organisation (C-MET) to come up and participating in setting up the centre and also open offer for the expansion of the recycling sector. We also need many more states to jump into this in a similar manner because e-waste is going to be distributed across the country,” added Subrahmanyam.
