In Germany, the Munich-based startup Tozero, which specializes in recycling lithium-ion batteries, has put its first hydrometallurgical pilot plant into operation in Karlsfeld near Munich. Its construction was financed in part by a pre-seed round from last year.
According to Tozero, which was founded in mid-2022, the pilot plant features large-scale technical equipment and supports the startup’s proprietary hydrometallurgical recycling technology.
About a year ago, Tozero raised €3.5 million in its pre-seed round, which it said was primarily intended to finance the plant near Munich. The startup’s backers include former VW executive Jochem Heizmann. In Tozero promotional videos, a representative from MAN Truck and Bus speak highly of the startup.
At the end of July this year, Germany-based Bethmann Bank said, in their online publication Tenor (in German), “Although the start-up is just a year old, it reached a milestone a few weeks ago: according to the company, the process not only works in the lab, but the founders have already implemented their idea on a larger scale.”
Secret recovery processes
Tozero continues not to disclose details about its technology. In an emailed statement we received, it simply says the approach “enables the sustainable recovery of all critical battery materials such as lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt and manganese.”
Tozero will be doing what other battery recycling companies do: they work with companies that discharge the batteries and take apart the casing, shredding the content to form a black powder. This can be separated into recoverable critical materials mentioned above with the help of sieves, magnets and chemical processes. While the process of producing black mass is not new, Tozero has developed a novel chemical process of component separation that is attracting the attention of the nascent German and European battery industries.
Now, with the new pilot plant, Tozero says it can already meet the EU’s minimum lithium recovery rate requirements of 80 per cent from 2031. The kind of interest the startup is acquiring and what other recyclers are aiming at would suggest their secret chemical process can do far more.
Available battery recycling material in Europe
While the processing capacity of the new plant goes unmentioned, the amount of batteries able to be recycled in Europe will depend on legislation, numbers of available electric vehicle and stationary storage batteries, and the second-life businesses and applications in what China calls the “cadence” battery uses before recycling. China is further along in this process, now legislating for “cadence” battery use with many business models and processes involved. Tozero founders highlight their goal to ensure “the endless life” of batteries.
In June this year, the EU Parliament adopted new rules for the design, manufacture and recycling of all types of batteries sold in the EU. Battery manufacturers will thus be subject to stricter environmental and due diligence requirements if they want to sell on the European market.
The interest in collaborations with battery recyclers in Europe, such as Tozero, includes battery makers, electric vehicle manufacturers – which in Germany, now includes some of the worlds largest automotive players, electronic waste recyclers, and second-life battery firms, such as their fellow German battery circularity firms, Voltfang (second-life batteries for stationary storage), or Volytica Diagnostics (technology to assess the life-cycle phase of a battery to determine the optimum time to move the materials onto the next phase of second or third-life applications and recycling).
Big ambitions, great start
On LinkedIn just a week ago, the Tozero founders said that in 5 years, they want to be one of the leading battery recyclers worldwide.
Before founding Tozero, Dr. Ksenija Milicevic Neumann worked as a Senior Researcher at IME Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling Institute on Battery Recycling, Space Resources and Zero-emission Metallurgy. Tozero is technically advised by Bernd Friedrich, head of the Institute for Process Metallurgy and Metal Recycling (IME) at RWTH Aachen University.
Dr. Neumann’s Co-founder is Sarah Fleischer, a graduate of Havard Business School and Columbia Business School in the US, her previous experience includes being a visiting fellow for innovation in science at Harvard, and an economic advisor to the Luxembourg Space Agency.
Now, opening the pilot plant, shrouded in relative secrecy, Fleischer says: “Together with our customers, suppliers and investors, Tozero is at the forefront of the electrification revolution in Europe. The newly opened pilot plant is an important milestone in our mission to truly bring lithium-ion battery waste to zero”.
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