Jennifer McManamay
Armed with a business plan to recycle lithium-ion batteries, reuse critical materials and reduce America’s reliance on foreign suppliers, a team of graduate students from the University of Virginia won a regional round of the American-made Energy Technology University Awards (EnergyTech UP), advancing to the final national competition in April.
“It is estimated that 11 million tonnes of lithium batteries will reach the end of their lifespan by 2030.”
Caroline Morin
EnergyTech UP is a collegiate competition organized by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transition. According to its website, the program challenges multidisciplinary student teams to develop business plans using “high potential energy technologies,” including those developed at DOE national laboratories.
The UVA team’s proposed business, Redox-Targeted Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling, or ReLi for short, aims to recycle all forms of lithium-ion batteries to recover critical materials and reintroduce them into the supply chain, said team captain Caroline Morin, a doctoral student in the research group of Associate Professor Jeffrey Geis in the Department of Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Morin’s teammates are MBA candidates Gregory Pilchuck and Aman Darr from the Darden School of Business; fellow chemical engineering doctoral student Charles Leroux, who works in the Gaze College Polymer Membrane Lab, and in the research groups of Associate Professor Gary Koenig, who specializes in battery electrode materials.
ReLi’s plan is premised on accelerating demand for lithium batteries: The team calculates that demand for lithium batteries will grow at a compound annual rate of 12%, reaching a market value of $1.9 trillion in 2031, which would mean a five-fold increase in demand for the critical metals used to make the batteries. Currently, the U.S. relies on foreign suppliers for these materials.
At the same time, “11 million tonnes of lithium batteries are expected to reach the end of their lifespan by 2030,” Morin said.
“The ReLi plan aims to reduce reliance on mining, make electric vehicles more affordable and accessible, and create new jobs in the region by retiring coal-fired power plants.”
“The team is tackling a big problem,” Koenig said. “As large batteries in electric vehicles and utility storage reach the end of their life, they will need a process to economically and efficiently recover the elements they contain, including lithium, cobalt and copper. This plan will help reduce the potential environmental impact of these batteries and provide a domestically sourced supply chain.”
In the first round of the competition, Team ReLi won $3,000 for their business plan in the South Atlantic region, qualifying them to move on to the next phase of the competition: a national pitch event at the Energy Thought Summit in Austin, Texas, next month, where teams will compete for cash prizes worth $50,000, $30,000 or $20,000.
In the regional round, the UVA team was also selected as a finalist for the National Laboratory Technology IP License Bonus Award for using National Laboratory-developed technology in their business plan. The National Laboratory Bonus Award winners were announced March 7, along with the bonus award winners in the other categories.
ReLi’s plan calls for collecting used batteries and using processes developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory to break them down into components that can then be resold as battery-grade raw materials. These techniques use less energy and produce less chemical waste compared to other battery recycling methods, Morin said.
In addition to creating a domestic supply of raw materials and preventing toxic battery waste from entering the environment, the ReLi plan aims to reduce reliance on mining, make electric vehicles more affordable and accessible, and create new jobs in areas where coal-fired power plants are closed.
ReLi’s big-picture approach reflects the choice facing the country, a kind of do-over moment.
“Ever since oil reserves were discovered in the United States, domestic energy demand has increased in correlation with economic growth,” Leroux said. “In nearly every material aspect, our country is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. As demand continues to grow, the life cycle of fossil fuels and their impact on the environment has not been taken into account.”
“As technological developments continue to increase our reliance on electric energy, we now have the opportunity to consider the entire lifecycle of batteries.”
Geiss and Koenig are proud of their team members for taking initiative and leveraging national lab technology, while also taking advantage of the EnergyTech UP program, which provides resources and mentorship to help them succeed.
“We are excited to see how their analyses and plans develop,” Geiss says. “The students are gaining critical skills to apply their research outside the lab and quantitatively evaluate technologies and business opportunities.”
This article originally appeared on the University of Virginia School of Engineering and Applied Science website.