Aqua Metals Electroplates First Critical Battery Metal from Lithium Battery Black Mass at Li AquaRefining™ Pilot
January 11 2023 - 7:00AM
Aqua Metals, Inc. (NASDAQ: AQMS) (“Aqua Metals" or the “Company”),
which is reinventing metals recycling with its AquaRefining™
technology, today announced it has successfully recovered critical
battery metal from spent lithium-ion batteries at production scale
by electroplating. The Company’s pilot Li AquaRefining system has
proven the ability to remove impurities and trace metals from tons
of recycled lithium battery ‘black mass’ and then selectively
recover pure metal using electricity instead of polluting furnaces
or wasteful chemicals processes.
Copper is the first of the valuable products
recycled using electricity in the patent-pending Li AquaRefining
process, a metal that is essential to clean energy technologies and
building a domestic battery manufacturing industry. The company
intends to follow by recovering lithium hydroxide, nickel, cobalt,
and manganese dioxide – recycling all the valuable minerals within
common black mass feedstock. Because AquaRefining is designed to
remove trace elements and recovers these pure metals selectively,
we believe the innovative system can process feedstock with varying
concentrations of critical minerals and adapt to future changes in
lithium battery chemistries.
“Successfully recovering commercial quantities
of pure metal from recycled lithium batteries using electroplating
is a significant milestone for Aqua Metals and the entire
industry,” said Steve Cotton, President and CEO of Aqua Metals. “We
believe Li AquaRefining can play an important role in accelerating
the development of a secure, sustainable domestic supply chain for
minerals essential to electric vehicle and battery energy storage
manufacturers, and this is a key step towards delivering our clean
recycled metals to market to meet the growing demand for
domestically-sourced content.”
Reclaiming metals with the Company’s closed-loop
electroplating technology enables economically favorable and
efficient production of high-purity products from spent lithium
batteries, without high-energy furnaces or the continuous waste
streams and expense of one-time-use chemicals. Aqua Metals believes
in a clean energy future powered by renewables and sees recycling
battery material with electricity derived from renewable sources as
the only viable pathway to achieving net-zero operations. The
Company currently purchases renewable energy credits (REC) for the
electricity used at the pilot facility and offsets all remaining
direct and indirect carbon emissions in its carbon footprint.
“We are seeing tremendous progress at our pilot
facility, and copper is first in the suite of clean battery metals
we expect to recover through Li AquaRefining,” said Ben Taecker,
Aqua Metals’ Chief Engineering and Operating Officer. “We are
proceeding to the recovery of battery-grade lithium hydroxide -
which we believe will also be a first for the metals recycling
industry in North America - then plating high-purity nickel and
cobalt, and finally recovering manganese dioxide. We look forward
to providing continued updates of milestones and performance from
our economically favorable and sustainable recycling technology
pilot.”
A modular, production-scale copper plating Aqualyzer, with the
first plated battery metal, at Aqua Metals’ pilot facility
About Aqua MetalsAqua Metals,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AQMS) is reinventing metals recycling with its
patented AquaRefining™ technology. The company is pioneering a
sustainable recycling solution for materials strategic to energy
storage and electric vehicle manufacturing supply chains.
AquaRefining™ is a low-emissions, closed-loop recycling technology
that replaces polluting furnaces and hazardous chemicals with
electricity-powered electroplating to recover valuable metals and
materials from spent batteries with higher purity, lower emissions,
and minimal waste. Aqua Metals is based in Reno, NV and operates
the first sustainable lithium battery recycling facility at the
company’s Innovation Center in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial
Center.
To learn more, please visit
www.aquametals.com
Aqua Metals Social MediaAqua
Metals has used, and intends to continue using, its investor
relations website (https://ir.aquametals.com), in addition to its
Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube accounts at
https://twitter.com/AquaMetalsInc (@AquaMetalsInc), https://www.linkedin.com/company/aqua-metals-limited
and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvxKNWcB69K0t7e337uQ8nQ
respectively, as means of disclosing material non-public
information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under
Regulation FD.
Safe HarborThis press release
contains forward-looking statements concerning Aqua Metals, Inc.
Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, our
plans, objectives, expectations and intentions and other statements
that contain words such as “expects,” “contemplates,”
“anticipates,” “plans,” “intends,” “believes,” “estimates,”
“potential” and variations of such words or similar expressions
that convey the uncertainty of future events or outcomes, or that
do not relate to historical matters. The forward-looking statements
in this press release include our expectations for our pilot
recycling plant, our ability to recycle lithium-ion batteries and
the expected benefits of recycling lithium-ion batteries. Those
forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks,
uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to
differ materially. Among those factors are: (1) the risk that our
pilot recycling plant may not successfully recycle spent lithium
batteries, (2) the risk that we may not derive the expected
economic benefits from our pilot recycling plant; (3) the risk that
licensees may refuse or be slow to adopt our AquaRefining process
as an alternative to smelting in spite of the perceived benefits of
AquaRefining; (4) the risk that we may not realize the expected
economic benefits from any licenses we may enter into; (5) the risk
that we may not be able to access additional capital, through the
sale of our TRIC facilities and equipment or otherwise, as and when
needed and (6) those other risks disclosed in the section “Risk
Factors” included in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on
February 24, 2022. Aqua Metals cautions readers not to place undue
reliance on any forward-looking statements. The Company does not
undertake and specifically disclaims any obligation to update or
revise such statements to reflect new circumstances or
unanticipated events as they occur, except as required by law.
Contact Information:
Investor RelationsContact:
Robert Meyers, FNK IR646-878-9204aqms@fnkir.com
MediaContact: Ariane Wolff,
Warner Communications978-729-3542ariane@warnerpr.com
Source: Aqua Metals
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at
https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3be7a0f2-5590-4cbf-af51-f1512c5ae94c
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