Emulsion Flow Technologies Japanese start-up can recycle cobalt and nickel from EV batteries 100 times faster The Japanese company Emulsion Flow Technologies (EFT) says it has developed a process that can separate cobalt and nickel from batteries for electric vehicles up to 100 times faster than existing techniques. The start-up hopes to bring the technology to market now. Hirochika Naganawa, chief technology officer (CTO) of EFT, said the invention should significantly reduce the time and cost of recycling precious metals from EV batteries. “Technology that hasn't changed since 1950 has finally moved forward,” Naganawa tells Nikkei Asia. The scientist says that metals recovered through the process have a purity of 99.99 percent, which means they can be used to produce new batteries. Oil and water The technique uses an emulsion of oil and water. Normally the two substances cannot be mixed, but by using a so-called emulsifier, a third substance that makes mixing possible, you can. The drops of oil are homogeneously distributed throughout the water. EFT then uses this emulsion to extract cobalt, nickel and other metals from batteries, which during the extraction process, as it were, 'surf along' on the oil droplets in the emulsion. After that, the oil is collected in one place, after which the metals attached to it can be extracted. Revolutionary Other companies also use emulsions, but EFT's method would be revolutionary because the entire process is done in one step, while older methods require three steps. As a result, the technique of EFT would be much cheaper and faster. Naganawa tells Nikkei Asia that the discovery actually happened by accident. The company is based in Tokai, a village best known for a few nuclear accidents that happened in the 1990s. Naganawa was working there in 2010 as a researcher for the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), trying to find ways to extract specific elements from radioactive waste. He then discovered that the emulsion process would be much more efficient if the oil droplets were of uniform size, which would speed up the collection process. Ten years later, he left the JAEA and won a start-up award, after which the investment started rolling in. He eventually founded EFT in 2021. Commercial Operation Now Naganawa's plan is to start a commercial operation as early as next year. This immediately aroused considerable interest: EFT works together with, among others, Mitsubishi Materials and Envipro Holdings, one of the largest recycling companies in Japan. “I hope we make international contributions in the future,” Naganawa said. https://emulsion-flow.tech/en/