Metso is looking to position itself as the preferred technology and solutions provider for the battery minerals industry, with a fully integrated offering from minerals extraction to refined battery chemicals and end-of-life battery black mass recycling.

The OEM can, today, provide sustainable technology and equipment to serve this sector, with its Planet Positive offering ensuring battery minerals production comes with the lowest possible footprint as well as the highest possible productivity.

Lithium is one of the most used minerals in battery manufacturing, with extraction from either brines or lithium-bearing ores, such as spodumene. Metso’s offering covers complete processes for both. For the hard-rock based spodumene concentrates, Metso has developed an acid- and sulphate-free soda pressure-leaching process as one of the most environmentally sustainable processes available for lithium production.

Other critical minerals like nickel and cobalt play an important role in the battery manufacturing chain, either in battery chemistry or in other components, with Metso able to offer a comprehensive and sustainable process technology offering also for these minerals.

Recycling of battery black mass is becoming an important means to complement primary battery metals supply and to reduce the carbon footprint of the battery supply chain. Metso’s hydrometallurgical battery black mass recycling process, which is part of the company’s Planet Positive offering, enables the sustainable recovery of critical metals for re-use in new battery production or in other applications.

All of this is complemented with Metso’s unique metallurgical digital twin GeminexTM, which is based on Metso’s proprietary HSC-Sim software for predictive process simulations.

To find out more about the company’s expanding offering for battery minerals, watch the video interview with Mikko Rantaharju, Vice President, Hydrometallurgy at Metso, here.