Norwegian Joint Venture to Recover Raw Materials From Electric Vehicle Batteries

Norsk Hydro and Northvolt have set up a joint venture dubbed Hydro Volt to operate a “recycling hub” of battery materials and aluminum from electric vehicles.

Operations in the hub to be built in the city of Fredrikstad will begin in 2021.

Recycling at the facility will be “highly automated” and used to crush and sort lithium-ion batteries to produce both aluminum and a black mass, consisting of cobalt, lithium, manganese, and nickel.

A Northvolt facility in Sweden will recover the raw materials contained in the black mass.

While the hub will initially have the capacity to process over 8,000 tons of batteries per year, Northvolt is targetting 50 percent of its raw material in 2030 to come from recycled batteries.

Norway has a mature electric vehicle market, with 43 percent of all new cars sold in 2019 being electric.