SINGAPORE: A recycling plant in Singapore is turning spent lithium batteries into useful metals, with the help of discarded fruit peels.

Nanyang Technological University (NTU) researchers who developed the technology of using fruit peels to tackle battery waste are working with local battery recycling and processing firm Se-cure Waste Management on the pilot project.

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Singapore, 28 March 2023

NTU Singapore and Se-cure Waste Management build pilot recycling plant to tackle lithium-ion battery waste with biomass waste

Following a successful proof-of-concept to recycle spent lithium-ion batteries using reagent extracted from fruit peel waste, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) is partnering Se-cure Waste Management Pte Ltd (SWM), a Singapore battery recycling and processing company, to scale up the technology in a pilot plant.

The pilot battery recycling plant has the capacity to process up to 2,000 litres of spent shredded battery mixed with fruit peel derived solvents for extraction of electrode materials such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese.

The scientists from the NTU Singapore-CEA Alliance for Research in Circular Economy (SCARCE), who developed the technology of using fruit peel waste to tackle battery waste, is also looking at using other types of biomass waste.

A key feature of the pilot plant is its modular design, which allows it to be easily configured for optimal reaction conditions to extract different types of metal.

Currently, less than 5 per cent of spent lithium-ion batteries are recycled globally and the volume of these spent batteries is projected to reach 11 million tonnes by 2030. Such technology could meet the urgent need for a recycling solution that is environmentally benign and can be easily scaled up, said the scientists from SCARCE.

Located at Neythal Road off Pioneer Road North, the pilot plant has been operational since the last quarter of 2022. Over the course of this year, the NTU and SWM team will work to optimise processes that maximise the extraction yield of valuable metals from battery waste for reuse at pre-commercial scale.

They will also evaluate the plant’s technical performance and economic viability with the goal of commercialising the technology.

Associate Professor Dalton Tay from the NTU School of Materials Science and Engineering and Cluster Director of the Energy Research Institute @ NTU (ERIAN) said: “With the proliferation of mobility devices and portable electronics, the model of extracting raw materials from the earth, using them, then discarding them is clearly unsustainable. Instead of relying on conventional mining of resources, we need to look at recovering and reusing the precious metals from our electronic waste. This integrated lithium-ion battery recycling pilot plant serves as an important engineering platform that takes us one step closer. Thanks to the support of NTUitive, NTU’s innovation and enterprise arm, we are able to work with SWM to take our technology from lab to industry, bridging the gap in the innovation continuum and paving the way towards its commercialisation.

“The use of biowastes such as fruit peel discards to close the loop on lithium-ion batteries is also a unique value proposition for potential carbon offsetting and creation of new distribution networks for green commodities. This homegrown effort enables us to make great strides towards a new and green circular economy in tackling bio- and electronic waste.”

Mr Vince Goh, Managing Director, Se-cure Waste Management, said: “Our collaboration with Assoc Prof Tay and the setting up of the pilot plant allow the seed of local innovation to grow and eventually flourish. This also provides SWM a closed-loop solution beyond processing batteries while enabling a greener and cleaner recycling process for resource sustainability. SWM and NTU will evaluate the commercial feasibility of NTU’s technology at a meaningful scale. In combination with our upstream core expertise in robotics-enabled electronic vehicle battery discharging and dismantling, as well as battery processing, SWM offers a systematic management of e-waste for the entire cradle-to-cradle.”

Professor Madhavi Srinivasan, Executive Director, NTU Sustainability Office, and SCARCE Co-Director, said: “This collaboration between NTU and SWM is part of NTU’s commitment to build a sustainable tomorrow, and fosters outcomes that address industry and societal needs outlined in NTU2025, the University’s five-year strategic plan. It is also in line with Singapore’s Zero Waste Masterplan, which charts the strategies towards a sustainable, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient nation.”

The fruit peel technology to recycle battery waste developed by SCARCE is supported by Singapore’s National Research Foundation and the National Environment Agency (NEA) under the Closing the Waste Loop Funding Initiative (Award No. USS-IF-2018-4).

Such efforts are also aligned with NEA’s Environmental Services Industry Transformation Map (ES ITM) 2025 in harnessing opportunities in environmental sustainability, and to pre-position companies like SWM for emerging opportunities in growth areas such as electronic vehicle batteries recycling.

Using biomass waste to replace strong chemicals

In 2020, an NTU team led by Associate Professor Dalton Tay and Professor Madhavi Srinivasan successfully extracted over 90 per cent (in weight) of the precious metals found in processed lithium-ion battery waste in the lab using orange peel waste and made new batteries with these recovered metals.

This method of using fruit peel waste in place of conventional strong chemicals and acids to extract precious metals from battery waste is called hydro-organic-metallurgy.

The scientists have since successfully replicated their success in the lab using other types of fruit peel waste – such as the peel of pineapples, pears, and lemons – before working with local e-waste recycling company Se-cure Waste Management (SWM) to scale up this technology. The scientists are now looking into the possibility of using other types of biomass waste.

In this new pilot plant, the process starts with SWM shredding and crushing spent lithium-ion batteries to form a crushed material, from which plastics and metals like copper, aluminium, and iron are separated. On average, the company processes 18 tonnes of spent lithium-ion batteries every day.

The final product, called black mass, contains the precious metals – cobalt, lithium, nickel, and manganese – to be extracted for reuse.

Black mass is poured into the pilot plant and dissolved in chemical concoctions derived from fruit peel wastes that has been oven-dried and ground into powder. These concoctions, which the scientists have filed a patent for, are designed to leach out precious metals over low heat.

Fruit peel is rich in sugars, naturally occurring antioxidants such as flavonoids and phenolic acids, and organic acids – all of which will enhance the dissolution and recovery of metals from the battery waste.

The precious metals are then precipitated into metal salts that can then be used to assemble new lithium-ion batteries.

Earlier, the NTU scientists demonstrated that lithium-ion batteries made from recovered metals showed similar charge capacity to commercial ones.

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ISO9001:2015, 14001:2015 & 45001:2018

October 14, 2022 was a monumental moment for SWM when we have been certified compliant to ISO9001, 14001 and 45001 standards. The achievement of these standards benefits every aspect of our business, from marketing and sales, to strategic planning and employee engagement. It indicates SWM’s commitment to continuously improve our quality, safety, efficiency, productivity and customer satisfaction – all done in a standardized, systematic and organized way.

“These systems aim to provide a practical and workable quality and EHS management system for improving and monitoring all areas of our business. We aim to demonstrate our commitment to an effective management approach with quality at our hearts to our customers, suppliers, shareholders and other key stakeholders”, Vince Goh, Managing Director.

SWM teams with NTU!

SWM teams with NTU’s materials science engineering (MSE) to support its launch of NTU’s undergraduate curriculum to meet current and futuristic engineering trends. Through this team-based design project initiative, groups of students work on real-life problem statements from industries, providing students the necessary exposure to grow their network and at the same time, understand how the industry works, honing their design thinking skills and approaching the right way to solve a current industry problem(s).

Through this collaboration effort, SWM gets first-hand experience working with NTU MSE undergraduates directly on a regular basis, with its provided problem statements. Through these two groups, SWM targets to take steps closer to resolution of the engineering challenges that the manufacturing function is currently facing. This collaboration is also an opportunity for SWM to identify fresh talents for its growing business in the near future.

Recovering Recycling and Repurposing Waste for a Greener Tomorrow

Before devoting his work full time with SWM and being one of the managing partners of SWM, Willie has devoted 90% of his career in the consumer electronics and electrical segments. From a rank-and-file individual to a self made entrepreneur, Willie comes with more than four decades of extensive industrial experience both commercially and operationally in handling the e-waste customer fulfillment process. Besides handling e-waste, Willie also came together with a few like minded local entrepreneurs in Indonesia to provide logistics & distribution services forthe garments and IT hardware businesses within Asia.“Poised to lead the forefront for battery recycling innovation, SWM aims to offer to its diverse stakeholders environmentally friendly e-waste management solutions that meet the unique needs of businesses”

With the world discarding at least $62.5 billion e-waste annually (as per UN Report), e-waste is one of the fastest-growing waste streams on Earth. E-waste releases toxic fumes when burnt and its chemicals can also seep into the soil and pollute waterways. Recycling electronic waste (e-waste, sometimes called e-scrap) has thus become an increasingly important environmental issue as the useful life of electronic devices becomes shorter and the list of electronic gadgets we use becomes longer. Recycling benefits are numerous and the need to address e-waste items in the solid waste stream is becoming more urgent. This has thus given rise to an increasing number of companies playing a role in managing e-waste. Singapore-based Se-cure Waste Management (SWM) is an example of one.

SWM is one of the few local enterprises approved by the Singapore National Environmental Agency (NEA) to handle the recycling of electronic waste into a form which is readily transformed into new raw materials through a proprietary mechanical transformation process. “We are by far one of the few enterprises in Singapore handling large scale lithium- ion batteries (EV batteries inclusive) recycling process locally. Our vision is to create and se-cure a greener environment for our future generations and we remain committed to our vision,” says Willie Ong, Founder at SWM.

Recycling, Recovering and Repurposing
SWM is an electronic waste disposal solution provider for resource re-cycling, re-covering, and re-purposing, creating sustainable resources for the environment. In the absence of a proper disposal solution, lithium-ion batteries will contribute to environmental pollution and adverse human health impact due to its potentially hazardous materials contained. The precious metals within these lithium-ion batteries would be permanently disposed when they could have been up-cycled for new uses. SWM is the essential downstream service provider for electronics producers who choose a responsible disposal method.Lithium-ion batteries compose of metals including cobalt, nickel, lithium and manganese. At the end of life, the battery goes through the recycling process. This processed material is known as “black mass”, consisting of amounts of cobalt, nickel, lithium, and manganese. These precious metals can be extracted.

The team at SWM repurposes by separating and sorting of recoverable metal waste/scrap. Then uses a proprietary mechanical transformation process to produce secondary raw materials (a form readily transformed into new raw materials). The output produced by the end of this production process is known as black mass – a ready product to be up-cycled for industrial use.

The primary service of SWM is electronic waste solutioning. This represents a complete customer fulfilment order process that begins with joint inspections and evaluations with customers/ stakeholders to understanding their unique business needs when it comes to responsible disposal, working closely with smelting plants and local scrap dealers to appropriately manage the disposal process (including SWM’s proprietary battery recycling process, and determining secondary usage of EV batteries for those requiring less energy density usage), providing customers/ stakeholders the peace of minds that their electronic waste has been taken care of in a compliant and transparent manner.

Innovation with Sustainability SWM is consciously seeking to reduce its carbon footprints emitted to the environment. “We are reviewing innovative approaches to actively reduce our operational energy density/ intensity and embarking on our trajectory calculation on our absolute carbon emission and adopting a science-based approach to reducing that impact,” says Willie. Further, the company is continuing refinement studies and driving local innovation through strategic collaboration(s) with institutions of higher learning in Singapore on its extraction technology to transform waste into readily available raw materials for batteries manufacturing as a way to achieve resource sustainability.

An audacious effort has also been taken by the team at SWM to provide further refinement to the current extraction process. Pending patents, SWM and its strategic collaborating partners are launching laboratory trial pilot electrochemical and organic hydrometallurgy processes within SWM’s premises to further review commercial viability and evaluate process scalability.

Poised to lead the forefront for battery recycling innovation, SWM aims to offer to its diverse stakeholders environmentally friendly e-waste management solutions that meet the unique needs of businesses. Waste today, precious resources tomorrow. “Our momentum for the future can be reflected through the multiplicity of efforts we are making today within SWM and in Singapore. We remain committed to delivering our vision, accelerating our progress to ensure local community adaptation, adoption and engagement as we continue to drive local awareness, participation and involvement,” concludes Willie.

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SWM opened its doors as planned on a bright sunny morning of May 30, 2022 at 8 Neythal Road Singapore 628575. This opening marks the first of many important changes for SWM over the next few years as we continue to strive to offer our diverse stakeholders e-waste solutions that meet the unique needs of their businesses.

This location’s modern ambience will allow SWM to carry out its lithium-ion batteries recycling, repurposing and recovering operations in a safe and compliant manner and provides immersive collaboration space with Singapore institutions of higher learning, promoting local innovation and technology.

In celebration of this significant occasion, the lion dance team performed to create a festive atmosphere and to bring happiness. Accompanied by the music of beating of drums, cymbals, and gongs instruments synchronized to the lion dance movements and actions, it is also believed culturally to bring to the business prosperity and success.

A hearty toast and cheer to SWM as we continue to serve our local community to create and se-cure a green environment for our future generations!

Date: 17 to 21 April 2022
Booth number: L1-N10

CESG & SIWW2022 Opening

Picture with Dr Amy Khor and Mr Desmond Tan

Picture with Dr Amy Khor and Mr Desmond Tan

Picture with Dr Amy Khor and Mr Desmond Tan

Foreign Delegates

Foreign Delegates

SWM’s Team

Picture with CEO of NEA

Team Picture

Team Picture

Singapore, April 17, 2022 – Se-cure Waste Management (SWM), the leading provider of electronic waste (e-waste) recycling, is pleased to announce the official opening of its new office at 8 Neythal Road on May 30, 2022.

This new location boosts a modern ambience, allows the organization to carry out its lithium-ion batteries recycling operations in a safe and compliant manner, and provides immersive collaboration space with institutions of higher learning (IHLs), promoting local innovation and technology.

“The opening of SWM’s office is an important step towards realizing our goal of being an integrated e-waste recycling leader for resource recovering and repurposing, creating sustainable resources for our environment. This new office will be the first of many important changes for the organization over the few years as we continue to strive to offer our diverse stakeholders environmentally- friendly solutions that meet the unique needs of their businesses,” said Vince Goh, Managing Director of SWM.

About Se-cure Waste Management

Singapore-based Se-cure Waste Management Pte. Ltd. specializes in the processing and recycling of electronic scrap/ waste (“e-waste”) with the use of innovative technology to yield the highest possible recycling rate with minimal environmental impact. It is poised to lead the forefront for battery recycling innovation. www.se-curewaste.com

For additional information, please contact:
Sandra Yap, Senior Manager – Marketing
+65 9752 0631
Sandra.Yap@se-curewaste.com