Princeton NuEnergy Awarded $12M Grant from U.S. Department of Energy
Princeton NuEnergy Inc. (PNE), has been awarded a $12 million grant from the U.S.
Princeton NuEnergy Inc. (PNE), has been awarded a $12 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). This grant was established to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign materials, enhance domestic manufacturing capabilities, and create well-paying clean energy jobs. The grant award, comprising a $10 million federal cost share and $2 million recipient cost share, is a testament to the United States' trust in direct recycling and upcycling technologies to advance the growth of emerging renewable technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs) and energy storage systems.
PNE is a U.S.-based innovative clean-tech company focused on recycling, repurposing, and commercializing lithium-ion battery (LIB) materials from EVs, consumer electronics, manufacturing scrap, and energy storage batteries. On October 25th, PNE launched the United States' first end-to-end direct lithium-ion battery recycling pilot production line with Wistron GreenTech in McKinney, Texas. Compared to other LIB recycling technologies, PNE's direct recycling low-temperature plasma-assisted separation process (LPAS) significantly reduces cost, environmental waste and CO2 emissions, yielding higher critical material recovery rates and material performance. PNE's new 500- ton pilot production line will recycle consumer batteries, LIB manufacturing scrap and spent EV cell batteries.
The grant adds onto an already successful year of funding with PNE's third DOE award. With the allocated funds, PNE will team up with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and University of California, Irvine (UCI) to develop processes aimed to improve end-to-end recycling efficiency. PNE will collaborate on optimizing the approach to automated LIB pack disassembly, cathode-to-cathode upcycling, anode-to-anode recycling/upcycling, electrolyte component recovery, and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder recovery.
Dr. Xiaofang Yang, Co-Founder and CTO of PNE, commented, "Winning the DOE grant is clearly an amazing achievement for the PNE team in a year full of amazing achievements. I would, of course, like to express my gratitude to the DOE EERE for believing in the potential of direct recycling and upcycling technology and helping us grow. We are excited to show how we can leverage this technology for the United States' lithium-ion battery supply chain."
To learn more, visit pnecycle.com.
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