Hydrovolt sets new industry standard for its main recycled product

Hydrovolt verifies a new industry standard for its black mass production according to life cycle assessment (LCA). The new standard established through recycling efforts reduces the carbon footprint with 75 percent, when compared to extraction from conventional mining.

Hydrovolt has considered the potential environmental impacts in its recycling process throughout the life cycle of its main product, black mass. This is a powder recovered from batteries containing critical battery raw materials including nickel, cobalt, manganese, lithium, and graphite – all of strategic importance for establishing a circular and sustainable battery value chain in Europe.

It is the first LCA we have carried out based on actual industrial production of black mass. We have quantified the carbon footprint as well as other impacts of our operations by looking at the impact of one kilogram black mass produced from typical battery packs recycled at our plant

Åsa Bengtsson, Chief Quality Officer, Hydrovolt

The verified LCA shows a very low carbon footprint of less than 0.2 kilograms CO2 equivalents per kilogram black mass. This means that the carbon footprint of our black mass production has an estimated 75 percent lower impact compared to extracting critical battery materials from conventional mining. This is based on the LCA results and an internal company analysis. The comparison demonstrates the opportunity for developing green batteries with recycled content, and less environmental impact.

We are proud to demonstrate that our recycling process is fully aligned with our high sustainability ambitions. We deliberately chose our dry recycling process due to its performance, and the LCA proves our ability to produce high-quality and sustainable products that enable recycled materials to re-enter manufacturing processes at industrial scale

Ole-Christen Enger, CEO, Hydrovolt

The plant in Fredrikstad is one of Europe’s largest recycling facilities of EV – and industrial batteries with capacity of 12,000 tons battery packs yearly and has been running since 2022. Hydrovolt has been producing black mass for over a year with the ability to achieve high environmental performance in an operational industrial scaled plant. This makes the company one of the leading battery recycling actors enabling clean electrification of several industries and the transport sector.

The LCA has been verified according to relevant ISO standards and reviewed by Minviro, a specialized software and consultancy company with expertise within LCA and the battery industry. The verification ensures that the LCA has met requirements for methodology, data interpretation, reporting and consistency.

Please do get in touch if you want access to the technical summary, the comparison figure on conventional mining vs recycling, or the photo of black mass.