NTU and Se-cure Waste Management (SWM) Build Pilot Recycling Plant To Tackle Lithium-ion Battery Waste with Biomass Waste - Assoc Prof Dalton Tay & Prof Madhavi Srinivasan

We are pleased to share that Associate Professor Dalton Tay and Professor Madhavi Srinivasan have been featured in the news and various media platforms regarding the establishment of a pilot battery recycling plant between NTU Singapore and Se-cure Waste Management Pte Ltd (SWM), a local battery recycling and processing company. This partnership was established following a successful proof-of-concept to repurpose spent lithium-ion batteries using reagents derived from fruit peel waste. 

In 2020, Assoc Prof Dalton Tay and Prof Madhavi Srinivasan of NTU Singapore-CEA Alliance for Research in Circular Economy (SCARCE) pioneered the technique of using fruit peel waste to turn old batteries into new ones (link). Terming it a "waste-to-resource" approach, the team developed an approach that successfully extracted around 90% of cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese from spent lithium-ion batteries. Their approach has comparable efficiency to the unsustainable and hazardous industrial process of using strong or weaker acid solutions with hydrogen peroxide.

Situated at Neythal Road off Pioneer Road North, the pilot battery recycling facility has been operational since the last quarter of 2022. It boasts the capability to handle as much as 2,000 litres of shredded and used batteries combined with solvents sourced from fruit peels employed to extract valuable electrode materials, including cobalt, lithium, nickel and manganese. Throughout this year, the team from NTU and SWM will focus on refining processes to maximise the extraction yield of valuable metals from battery waste for reuse at a pre-commercial scale.