First in Europe
Automatically stored design
Mercedes-Benz opened a new type of recycling factory for batteries from electric cars in southern Germany on Monday. According to the company, this makes it the first car manufacturer in the world to close the battery recycling loop with its own plant.
An integrated "mechanical-hydrometallurgical process" is used in Kuppenheim in Baden, not far from Stuttgart. In contrast to the pyrometallurgical process established in Europe today, the hydrometallurgical process is less energy-intensive and produces less waste.
While plastics, copper, aluminum and iron are sorted by type in the mechanical part of the process, the downstream hydrometallurgical process is dedicated to the so-called black mass. 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 are therefore suitable for the production of new battery cells. Overall, Mercedes-Benz expects the mechanical-hydrometallurgical recycling plant to achieve a recovery rate of more than 96 percent.
The plant, in which Mercedes-Benz has invested tens of millions of euros, is the first in Europe to cover all steps from shredding the battery modules to drying and processing the battery-active recyclable materials.
The battery recycling plant has an annual capacity of 2500 tons. The recovered recyclable materials will be used in the production of more than 50,000 battery modules for new all-electric Mercedes-Benz models.
The company offers reconditioned batteries as spare parts for all electric vehicles in order to do justice to the idea of a closed economic cycle and conserve resources. In addition, the subsidiary Mercedes-Benz Energy has established a successful business model with large-scale stationary storage applications. Batteries that can no longer be used in the vehicle can continue to be used in a second-life storage system.
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