RE: Brundle @ House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee7 Feb 2024 11:05
"Secondly, the reason why the black mass currently goes out to Asia is that they have a process that enables them to split the black mass and recover around 80% of the lithium—previously, it was 60%. In Europe and the US, they are washing away the lithium at the start of the process, leaving only the remaining three salts. Warwick University has developed a process that we are working on, along with a car company, where we can extract the lithium from our black mass to a 99.8% quality, enabling enough to go back to be cradle-to-cradle material so that it can go back into a battery. The challenge is not cradle to grave; it is cradle to cradle, which is what we are trying to deliver. That work is here in the UK. We have got it; we have invested in the academia and they are brilliant. We just have to upscale the TRL level and it is on its way."