E-MOBILITY
expertise and application in other industries, with batteries being such a massive concern right now, why has nobody adapted this for something that is so manmade, like a battery? Bacteria have a proven track record in other areas and industries, and are capable of recovering every kind of critical mineral you can think of. These bacteria have existed longer than humankind, they’re 50 million years old and have shaped our coasts, islands, the way that metal is formed and produced, and so on.” There are many millions of sub-
strands of bacteria, making Cell Cycle’s technique applicable to an almost infinite range of materials. Compared to the 60 elements contained within a motherboard, an electric battery typically contains less than 10, the main ones being lithium, nickel, cobalt, aluminium and copper. “Bacteria can help to recover all
of those minerals, but they are also flexible and easily scalable,” Nagle says. “When you look at the industry’s current standard methods of assigning batteries, we’re talking about tens of millions of investment for purpose- built facilities built around one type of battery chemistry. We grow bacteria in a tank, the only consideration is how big that tank is for us to be able to scale in line with the industry’s needs. As time goes on, we can scale up our solution and adapt our process without being hampered by having to rebuild or go back to the drawing board to produce a bigger facility or a different process. This also means lower operating costs.” Truly sustainable recycling is a key
pillar in Cell Cycle’s mission. As Nagle points out, battery recycling typically requires extreme heat and many tonnes of water and other processes to recover various critical minerals. “This isn’t sustainable for us,” he says.
LithiumCycle can recover crucial minerals during the battery recycling process
“We grow the bacteria, we cultivate it, and once it reaches a certain point, we regenerate the bacteria. We don’t lose it as a byproduct of our recycling process, any kind of effluent feeds right back through the bacteria. The bacteria are also naturally grown, just like the bacteria in your gut, they multiply on their own within the right environment, which is just 37 degrees – body temperature – which means we don’t use extreme heat. They also capture and consume carbon dioxide as a way to grow and produce oxygen, just like plants, so in a way we’re not just carbon neutral, we’re carbon negative.” Cell Cycle is currently working with
We grow bacteria in a tank, the
only consideration is how big that tank is for us to be able to scale in line with the industry’s needs
Coventry University and Innovate UK to scale up its pilot patented biotechnology recycling process to become a real- world fully closed-loop solution. “We’re just about to finish
the production of our second laboratory site in Manchester at our headquarters,” Nagle adds. “We will finish and complete our demonstration pilot scale process by the end of this year. From 2026 onwards, we will be hitting commercial scale in multiple facilities with this process implemented within them. The recovery rates, when benchmarked across current industry standards, are pretty similar, and we will continue to improve these in order to effectively and efficiently recover these materials and provide the battery industry, and others, with these fundamental minerals to be put back into production quickly and sustainably. “As an industry, we need to start
looking further back – millions of years – to see what processes and techniques we already have an abundance of access to that can use to recycle and recover these critical resources.”
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