Mercedes-Benz opens its own battery recycling factory

Mercedes-Benz has partnered with an Australian company to become the first car manufacturer worldwide to close the loop on batteries with its own in-house recycling facility.

The battery recycling plant in Kuppenheim, southern Germany has an integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical process that will recover valuable and scarce raw materials such as lithium, nickel and cobalt to then be used in new batteries for future all-electric Mercedes-Benz vehicles.

The plant has an annual capacity of 2500 tonnes. Unlike existing established processes, the expected recovery rate of the plant is more than 96 per cent.

Mercedes-Benz’s technology partner for the battery recycling factory is Primobius, a joint venture between German plant and mechanical engineering company SMS group and Australian process technology developer Neometals.

The project looks at the entire process chain for recycling, including logistics and reintegration concepts, while the plant covers all steps from shredding battery modules to drying and processing active battery materials.

The mechanical process sorts and separates plastics, copper, aluminium and iron in a complex, multi-stage process.

The downstream hydrometallurgical process is dedicated to the so-called black mass – the active materials that make up the electrodes of the battery cells.

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.

The hydrometallurgical process is less intensive in terms of energy consumption and material waste, supplied with 100 per cent green electricity.

The recovered materials feed into the production of more than 50,000 battery modules for new all-electric Mercedes-Benz models.

Thekla Walker, Baden-Württemberg’s Environment Minister, and Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Mercedes-Benz has set itself the goal of building the most desirable cars in a sustainable way.

“As a pioneer in automotive engineering, Europe’s first integrated mechanical-hydrometallurgical battery recycling factory marks a key milestone towards enhancing raw-materials sustainability,” said Walker.

“Together with our partners from industry and science, we are sending a strong signal of innovative strength for sustainable electric mobility and value creation in Germany and Europe.”
Ola Källenius, Chairman of the Board of Management of Mercedes-Benz Group AG said the future of the automobile is electric, and batteries are an essential component of this.

“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,” said Källenius.

For more information,www.mercedes-benz.com.au/