American Manganese (TSX.V: AMY) reported achieving 99.88% purity in its production of NMC cathode material using its proprietary
Scrap NMC contains lithium-nickel-manganese-cobalt and, according to the British Columbia-based firm, its technology is capable of recycling the minerals and generating products for lithium-ion batteries.
In a press release, the company said that the high-purity recovery rates recently reported prove that it is possible to expect a sustainable supply of such metals.
“Cathode materials require extremely high purity levels and must be almost entirely free of unwanted metals in order to conform to industry specifications, which our initial results confirmed today,” Larry Reaugh, American Manganese’s president and CEO, said in the media brief. “We continue to develop and be transparent with our results in order to set the benchmark on recovery and purity potential in the lithium-ion battery recycling field.”
Besides high purity, AMY’s technology showed earlier this year that it is also able to achieve high extraction rates.
In a series of lab tests run by independent lab Kemetco, recovery rates were of 94% from NMC scrap and 91.4% from NCA scrap, the latter containing lithium-nickel-cobalt-aluminum.