Business
Aqua Metals Produces High Purity Nickel in Metal Form at its Innovation Center
High-quality metal extraction promises to reduce cost while minimizing environmental impacts – aligned with the bipartisan goal of building a domestic supply
About this update from Aqua Metals, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"High-quality metal extraction promises to reduce cost while minimizing environmental impacts – aligned with the bipartisan goal of building a domestic supply chain for strategic battery metals\nRENO, Nev., April 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQMS) (\"Aqua Metals\" or the \"Company\"), a leading innovator in metals recycling with its AquaRefining™ technology, has achieved an additional milestone in proving its recycling technology by plating high purity nickel metal, one atom at a time, from black mass created from a variety of lithium-ion batteries. This achievement supports the expectation that Aqua Metals’ Li AquaRefining potentially has strong economic and environmental advantages over other lithium-ion recycling processes in use or under development. High purity nickel enables a streamlined process for producing lithium battery-grade material. Aqua Metals’ early test production of nickel sulfate, a compound often used in battery precursor material, showed promising results. “The only Li-battery recycling method commercially in use today is smelting, which produces an alloy of the metals that needs multiple pyrometallurgical steps of processing to achieve the product we produce right out of our system,” said David Regan, Vice President of Commercial for Aqua Metals. “These additional steps add emissions and cost, which is why we believe our process may be more cost-effective and sustainable than smelting or other recycling methods, and even mining.” Nickel is a key component in lithium-ion batteries as it can pack a lot of energy per battery while allowing battery producers to reduce the use of cobalt, which is more expensive. According to Stockhead, nickel demand for lithium-ion batteries could grow by 567% by 2025, compared to 2019 levels. The exponential growth in demand for nickel due to the global expansion of EVs has resulted in a correlating and unprecedented surge in nickel prices. The nickel market was already exceptionally tight due to supply concerns in Indonesia, the top producer of nickel, but this was greatly exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, as Russia is one of the world’s largest suppliers of the metal. Russia’s invasion and subsequent sanctions resulted in nickel prices hitting record-breaking levels in March, increasing as much as 60% in one day, one o...