Dr. Chao Yan and a trio of colleagues from Princeton University banded together to form Princeton NuEnergy based on an idea they believe could be a potential game-changer for clean energy — and, really, the world.
Before you get to decide if that’s an appropriate assessment, there’s the problem: He has to explain it first.
Yan concedes that talking about this novel method for recapturing precious materials from lithium-ion batteries, which involves the use of ionized plasma gas, hasn’t always been easy. He’s an Ivy League scientist, habituated to the high-level tech-speak of scientific conferences.
“But I’m getting better at talking with people without a background in science about this,” he said with a laugh. “I can talk to my mom and my three kids, who are 10, 8 and 6, about it, and they know in detail what I’m doing. I think that means I’m becoming a good translator.”
Here’s the easy part to understand: Lithium-ion batteries are full of costly stuff, including aluminum, steel and cobalt. And those batteries, and what’s inside them, are crucial to the roll-out of more electric vehicles.
“That’s why we understand it’s important to recycle the valuable materials in these batteries,” Yan said. “But the cost of traditional recycling (of these batteries) has been very expensive.”
Yan described a crude set of techniques historically used for recycling these battery components, such as shredding the batteries with machinery to roughly extract certain elements. Another approach involves creating a soup of battery components by melting them in a vat of acid, which Yan said introduces chemical waste into a procedure ostensibly meant to advance clean energy.
“Besides causing pollution, it’s energy intensive, too,” he said. “(Ours) is a lower cost, cleaner process.”
Yan, who studied at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, helped research and test a different approach over the course of two years with his company’s co-founders at Princeton University. Their process, in basic terms, cleans up the materials in spent batteries instead with low-temperature, highly reactive plasma. The process purifies the wasted materials, which then allows them to be reused.
The research he and his colleagues did was something they believed was destined for more than academic discussions and scholarly articles. They wanted to have a real-world impact. And that served as the impetus for them to launch their startup, Princeton NuEnergy, in 2019. The company’s base is the clean energy-focused Rutgers EcoComplex in Bordentown.
The goal from then-on has been to scale up and land the right customers. To that end, they partnered closely with Wistron Greentech, the subsidiary of a Fortune 500-ranking, multi-billion-dollar Taiwanese corporation.
The company helped them establish the first production-scale direct recycling line for lithium-ion batteries in the country. The large Texas facility where that operation is hosted has the potential of processing up to 500 tons of used-up batteries as well as manufacturing scrap.
“That recovery of materials back to the supply chain is important, too,” he said. “Even for the larger players (in manufacturing), the amount of waste in manufacturing scrap can be 5 to 15%.
“The current situation is that the cost of manufacturing in the U.S. is more expensive than other places in the world. We need better technologies to have lower costs for facilities and safer processes for workers. People should expect us to provide one of the best technologies in the U.S. to (achieve that).”
Yan added that while the transition to electric vehicles — which he said all have batteries that tend to degrade and reach a terminal point after 10 to 20 years of use — has led to an influx of demand for the materials in lithium-ion batteries, there’s other clean energy trends involved in driving that demand.
“The solar market continues to grow very fast,” he said. “In order to get those operations running, you have to have huge energy storage systems that also require these same supplies.”
There’s many routes Yan expects Princeton NuEnergy anticipates taking in the future, including helping utility systems with energy storage systems recycle their batteries.
But to make the impact they’re hoping for, the company will have to develop a system of collecting end-of-life lithium-ion batteries for recycling, before they’ve been condemned to the landfill.
That’s one of the issues Princeton NuEnergy is working on with local recycling societies, policymakers and legislators. And they’ll be moving forward on that with a board of director brain-trust that includes Richard Mroz, a senior director at Archer Public Affairs and former president of the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.
“We’re going to seek participation from governments and other companies to solve real problems,” Yan said. “We are really actually doing this — it’s not just an idea. It’s in practice and happening and scaling, with New Jersey as our starting point.”
Conversation Starter
Reach Princeton NuEnergy at: pnecycle.com or call 973-818-3428.