2023-05-17 18:25:58
It is, in a way, the missing brick in the four giga battery factory projects that will soon see the light of day in Hauts-de-France, the first of which will be inaugurated at the end of the month in Billy-Berclau. Orano (ex-Areva) and the Chinese company XTC will set up a recycling and parts manufacturing unit for these batteries in Dunkirk.
This decision had been mentioned, from May 12, during the visit of the President of the Republic to the city and it was confirmed by Orano, on May 16. The total amount of the planned investment is 1.3 billion euros, with the key to the creation of 1,700 jobs, Emmanuel Macron then welcomed. The start-up of the installations is planned for 2025 for the first and in 2026 for the rest of the project.
A process developed with the CEA
For Orano, this is clearly a new business, alongside its traditional activities in the upstream and downstream of the nuclear cycle. The company is first known as a specialist in the extraction of uranium, its enrichment and the reprocessing of spent fuel.
The group led by Philippe Knoche highlights its experience in mining, hydrometallurgy and chemistry to justify its choice to embark on this new activity. In 2020, he approached Liten, a laboratory of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) based in Grenoble, to develop an innovative process for recycling lithium batteries. Orano then experimented with it in its innovation center located in Haute-Vienne.
The group does not provide sales forecasts. “The market is growing strongly with 500,000 tonnes of batteries to be recycled per year by 2035 and we are among the first to develop an industrial offer”assure Didier David.
For its part, XTC is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of active cathode materials (CAM), key components of batteries that condition their performance. The Chinese wanted to set up in Europe to be close to these new gigafactories, which have decided to supply themselves as close as possible to their location.
An “urban mine”
“The two groups have found a common interest in teaming up on this project”summarizes Didier David, director of the battery recycling project at Orano, who highlights the concept of “urban mining”, in other words the need to develop an economy based on the reuse of raw materials on which Europe remains highly dependent for its supply. According to him, gigafactories could eventually use around 30% recycled materials.
The two groups will therefore combine their know-how with the installation of two factories in the port of Dunkirk. Schematically, the first will be managed by Orano. It will take care of the recycling of batteries with the recovery of different materials, such as nickel, manganese, cobalt and lithium, then their reprocessing, so that they can be reused. The second will be led by XTC. It will make the different mixtures by combining them with binders before sending them to battery manufacturers.
The Dunkirk site will also reprocess scrap and offcuts from gigafactories. At cruising speed, it should produce 80,000 tonnes of cathode materials per year.
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