ION Partners with University of Adelaide in the ARC Battery Recycling Initiative
Yesterday, our battery recycling Investment, Iondrive (ASX: ION) announced that it has partnered with the University of Adelaide in the ARC Battery Recycling Initiative.
This initiative is a federally funded program which will funded as follows:
(Source)
Importantly, ION has the ability to secure the exclusive first right to license technology developed through the program.
ION has already shown its impressive ability to secure important commercial and technological partnerships before…
Below are some of the organisations that ION works with:
We see these partnerships as external validation of IONs Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) process.
Here’s more on that…
Reminder: Why did we Invest in ION?
We Invested in ION because its technology is different to other recycling technologies in the market.
Most battery metals recycling technologies are some form of a pyrometallurgical process OR a hydrometallurgical process:
- Pyromet - where things are heated to extremely high temperatures using heaps of energy. Energy that can be expensive and depending on the location of the plant, not very environmentally friendly.
- Hydromet - where acids/solvents are applied to treat waste. Sometimes these acids/solvents can be environmentally damaging/toxic.
ION’s tech is a form of hydromet which uses “Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES)” together with “benign organic solvents”.
The combination means ION’s approach uses solvents that are non-toxic and oftentimes biodegradable.
This chemical approach should be a lot more cost effective and have lower energy requirements compared to existing recycling methods.
So far, ION has taken its tech and shown that it works on a large lab scale and shown the ability to recover:
- 89.1% of lithium (with potential to improve this...)
- 100% of nickel
- 98.6% of cobalt
- 98.4% of manganese
Now ION will move through to the “scale up” phase where it will need to prove that its technology works at scale.
If it is able to de-risk the scale up of its technology it could be a significant re-rate for the company.
We expect yesterday’s partnership to contribute to ION proving its technology at scale.
How does this impact our ION Investment Memo?
We see this part of the corporate deals objective - which will help build up ION’s standing in the battery recycling industry.
Objective #4: Corporate deals to secure business model
While the pilot plant is being constructed we want to see ION secure corporate deals, offtake agreements, black mass supply, industry partnerships and funding/financing.
Milestones
✅Industry deal 1
🔲 Industry deal 2
🔲 Industry deal 3
🔲 Industry deal 4
🔲 Industry deal 5
What’s next for ION?
We want to see ION firm up the economics of its recycling plant - to help build confidence in the market that the project.
Objective #1: Publish economics on recycling plant projects.
ION is currently undertaking an economic study to evaluate the NPV and IRR of its recycling plant. This will provide us with a much better picture of the potential economic upside of the project.
Milestone
🔄 Economic modelling of Net Present Values
Read more about ION in our initiation note on the company:
