Mercedes-Benz has opened a battery recycling centre in Kuppenheim, Germany with technology partner Primobius, a joint venture between German plant and mechanical engineering company SMS group, and Australian process technology developer Neometals.
The carmaker said it had “invested tens of millions of euros” in the construction of the new battery recycling plant to close the loop in battery materials supply. The build of the facility was first announced early in 2023.
Mercedes-Benz is receiving funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action as part of a scientific research project with three German universities. The project looks at the entire process chain for recycling, including logistics and reintegration.
The carmaker said the plant uses an integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical process with an expected recovery rate for materials, including cobalt, lithium and nickel, of 96%. Those materials will be suitable for reuse in batteries for future Mercedes-Benz EVs.
According to Mercedes-Benz the Kuppenheim recycling plant has an annual capacity of 2,500 tonnes and the recovered materials will be used to make 50,000 battery modules for new all-electric Mercedes-Benz models.
Mercedes-Benz said it is offering reconditioned batteries as spare parts for all of its EVs. In addition, its Mercedes-Benz Energy subsidiary is using batteries no longer suitable for vehicle use for large-scale stationary storage applications.
“The future of the automobile is electric and batteries are an essential component of this,” said Olaf Scholz, Federal Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany who was at the official opening. “To produce batteries in a resource-conserving and sustainable way, recycling is also key. The circular economy is a growth engine and, at the same time, an essential building block for achieving our climate targets! I congratulate Mercedes-Benz for its courage and foresight shown by this investment in Kuppenheim. Germany remains a cutting-edge market for new and innovative technologies.”
Mechanical-hydrometallurgical process
The Mercedes-Benz battery recycling plant in Kuppenheim is an industry first, according to the carmaker, by providing a complete mechanical-hydrometallurgical recovery process from shredding battery modules to drying and processing active battery materials. The mechanical process sorts and separates plastics, copper, aluminium and iron and the downstream hydrometallurgical process is dedicated to black mass recovery. These are the active materials that make up the electrodes of the battery cells. The valuable metals cobalt, nickel and lithium are extracted individually in a multi-stage chemical process. These recyclates are of battery quality and therefore suitable for use in the production of new battery cells.
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