Date: Apr 04, 2019
The United States Patent and Trade Mark Office has issued a patent for American Manganese’s (TSX.V: AMY) lithium-ion battery cathode material recycling technology.
In a press release, the British Columbia-based company indicated that the granting of the patent constitutes a milestone as it provides legal protection of its flagship technology.
“When developing this technology, we looked at current methods of recycling waste from lithium-ion batteries and discovered high heat smelting to be the primary method,” said Norm Chow, inventor of the company’s technology, in the media brief. “Because active cathode materials are oxides, the first thing that came to mind was the comparison to steelmaking. Since smelting iron ore in steelmaking generates a considerable amount of CO2, we were compelled to develop an alternative process with a sustainable focus. During research development, we applied Near Net Shape manufacturing principles with the goal of efficiently recycling cathode material and generating products as close to the final form as possible, with minimum processing steps.”
