Aqua Metals Inc. AQMS is a company pioneering a new form of lithium-ion battery recycling. At the core of Aqua Metals' innovation is the AquaRefining process, a sophisticated system that transforms lithium battery ‘black mass’ – the industry term for the composite of shredded battery metals and manufacturing scraps ready to be recycled – into high-purity, reclaimed materials ready to be delivered back into the supply chain.
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00:00 Welcome, and it's Michael Murray with Benzinga.
00:04 Steve Cotton, the CEO of Aqua Metals, joining us here.
00:06 Steve, great to have you with us.
00:08 How are you?
00:08 Great.
00:09 Thanks for having me, Michael.
00:10 It's a pleasure to have you here, Steve.
00:12 For anybody in our audience that hasn't heard of Aqua Metals,
00:15 can you kick us off by giving us a quick overview of the company?
00:17 Yeah, absolutely.
00:19 So Aqua Metals is a real clean,
00:21 innovating recycler that has figured out a way to decarbonize and reduce
00:28 the waste streams in recycling of lithium ion batteries.
00:32 So we do that with a very innovative electrical process that uses
00:37 renewable energy instead of intensive chemicals and fossil fuels to do the recycling.
00:43 Terrific.
00:43 Now talk to us about your technology.
00:45 How can you recycle metal without smelting and intensive chemicals,
00:48 and what are the environmental benefits that come along with that?
00:51 Yeah, so we recycle through electricity, which we can use renewable electricity,
00:56 and that affords us the opportunity to drive the process without using things like oil and gas
01:05 and fossil fuels or one-time use chemicals.
01:09 And that allows us to also save on the economics.
01:13 And the way that we do that is that we drive the process through the electron as the reagent,
01:19 and we regeneratively create the chemicals that we use to do the recycling over and over in a circular loop.
01:28 And that really gives us an economic advantage as well as an environmental advantage.
01:33 Understood.
01:34 Now, Steve, how critical will sustainable recycling be in our push towards a cleaner energy future?
01:39 With all the additional need for batteries to be built, how can your process fit in?
01:43 Yeah, so we are a really critical part of the supply chain.
01:47 As the U.S., as an example, stands up battery manufacturing, cathode-active materials that go into that battery manufacturing,
01:55 and of course the minerals that are required to do that.
01:59 And so aqua metals being able to reclaim the nickel and the lithium and the cobalt to get back into that battery supply chain,
02:08 really helping to stand up the percentage of recycled materials that are in new batteries is a critical part of that process
02:15 and a critical part of keeping those minerals within the country.
02:19 And if we can sustainably recycle those minerals, we can really drive forward towards a net-zero economy
02:27 and have the ability to see all the benefits that we're seeking from going from oil and gas and burning things and fossil fuels
02:36 to a much cleaner energy production and energy storage and energy use world.
02:40 Got it.
02:41 And then, Steve, you recently announced several updates at your company's Sierra Arc facility.
02:45 Talk to us about that commercial-scale facility and what milestones do we expect to achieve there this year?
02:50 Yeah, so it's a very exciting time at the Sierra Arc, and the Arc stands for Aqua Refining and Recycling Center.
02:56 And it's called the Sierra Arc because it's about 30 minutes east of where I'm sitting here in South Reno at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.
03:05 We've applied our technology from a pilot operation that we've been running for the past year in the same industrial center.
03:13 And now the Sierra Arc is being stood up and will be introducing its initial feedstock materials by mid this year.
03:22 And then we expect to scale that facility through the remainder of the year and into early 2025.
03:27 And that will get us to about 3000 tons of crushed batteries as the input.
03:33 Another way of looking at that is that's about 30,000 EV battery packs that the Sierra Arc will be able to process and generate new minerals for in its phase one of operations.
03:45 And then we intend to continue expanding that to 10,000 from 3000, so more than triple.
03:51 And that would get to around 100,000 EV battery packs of average size.
03:55 Absolutely.
03:56 Now, a vital question for you, Steve, what are the biggest hurdles of electrification to the U.S. vehicle fleet and how do we overcome these?
04:02 Yeah, so there's some challenges as it relates to infrastructure overall, such as charging infrastructure.
04:09 That's a big topic of conversation these days.
04:12 And when we look at charging infrastructure, we would all like to see more charging infrastructure for road trips and more range in the vehicles.
04:19 And that's what the American driver is certainly looking for.
04:23 So we're seeing more and more government support as well as private industry investments in putting those chargers out there into the marketplace to get people more and more comfortable that they can also find places to charge their electric vehicle in addition to get gas.
04:39 So that's one of the key infrastructure pieces that's going to reduce these things that we talk about, like range, anxiety, et cetera.
04:47 So we see that as a really key area.
04:49 The other part of the infrastructure, of course, is being able to create all these critical battery minerals right here in the U.S. and put those back into the supply chain.
04:59 So that's where that whole closed loop of gigafactory battery manufacturing and recycling and reclaiming those materials and supplementing ultimately with mining versus supplementing with recycled materials in the long run.
05:11 As we've seen with other battery chemistries like lead acid batteries that have about 80 to 90 percent of their materials that come from the recycled batteries rather than from the mining environment.
05:24 So that's a whole new industry that's being stood up from an infrastructure perspective with lots of government programs and grants and loans, but also lots of really talented people in private and publicly held companies like Aqua Metals is driving towards the creation of that infrastructure.
05:43 It's going to be really exciting over the remainder of this decade to see this country go from one gigafactory generating new lithium ion batteries to all the support and supply chain capabilities to go to 200x of that by just the end of this decade.
05:59 Wonderful. Steve, we can't thank you enough for all the insights you've given to us today.
06:03 Thank you very much for joining us.
06:05 Thanks for being on the channel and really appreciate the CEO of Aqua Metals, Steve Cotton, being here with us today.
06:09 Thank you very much.
06:10 Thanks.
06:10 Thanks.
06:11 Thanks.
06:12 Thanks.
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