What inspired you to develop a bio-based recycling solution for lithium-ion batteries?
Like many great inventions and business stories, the creation of AraBat and our bio-based recycling system was driven by vision, ambition, and a touch of serendipity. Five years ago, all we had were our skills (mainly in engineering and business), a strong friendship, and an insatiable hunger to create something revolutionary. Reading an article about the potential of biomass in electronic waste recycling sparked an idea: "What if we could tackle the global lithium battery problem using resources from our own region, like orange peels and other plant by-products abundant in Puglia?" From that moment, day by day, we built our technological portfolio, driven by a primal force, sometimes even a childlike, fearless curiosity free from prejudice. In short: first came the vision, then the technology and business developments followed. And with great pride, as several media outlets have recently noted, we were among the first in the history of Italy to bring the issue of lithium battery recycling to the public debate. Not bad for five friends challenging the world, the status quo, and established power systems.
Battery recycling is often complex and costly. What are the key problems you saw in the current system, and how does AraBat solve them differently?
Battery recycling is critical for humanity’s future, especially as we move towards full electrification despite some recent challenges. Traditional recycling methods, like pyrometallurgy (burning batteries at extremely high temperatures) and conventional hydrometallurgy (extracting raw materials using inorganic reagents), while sometimes efficient, are problematic and unsustainable in the long term. On average, recycling costs exceed $4-6 per kg of battery, emitting over 10 kg of CO2 per kWh of battery recycled, along with significant NOx and SOx emissions, often overlooked but highly harmful. Based on this, we developed an original bio-based solution that replaces inorganic reagents with biological ones - biomass (like orange peels) combined with organic acids. This approach offers faster processing, lower energy consumption, equal or higher efficiency, and, most importantly, greater sustainability. And we made it happen.
You use plant waste like orange peels in your process. Can you walk us through how your technology works in simple terms?
Our technology is a green hydrometallurgical process - we call it “AraMet” - designed to sustainably recover critical raw materials, such as lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, copper, and aluminum from spent lithium-ion batteries and other waste. The process involves three key phases: i) mechanical pretreatment: this initial phase includes discharging and mechanically shredding the batteries to recover copper foil (and other components) and produce a material known as black mass; ii) bio-based leaching: The core of our process, where we use water, organic acids (e.g., citric acid at <1.5 M concentration), and biomass derived from vegetable and/or fruit waste (like orange peels!) to extract valuable metals; iii) selective precipitations: finally, we adjust the pH of the leaching solution through three selective precipitations (alkaline, ethanol, and CO2 bubbling) to recover high-value materials as hydroxides (Ni, Mn, Co) and carbonates (Li). It’s an innovative, efficient, and, above all, environmentally friendly process.
What kind of impact have you seen so far, both in terms of performance and sustainability?
Our research and development efforts have delivered outstanding results: 95% leaching efficiency, over 80% precipitation rates, and 84-90% metal purity, ready for the market and to close the battery loop. In terms of sustainability, our life cycle assessments show significantly lower CO2 emissions compared to key competitors using traditional hydrometallurgy. Plus, our process emits zero NOx and SOx, making it less toxic, easier to manage, highly scalable, and perfectly aligned with our "social-ecological vision of the universe."
What kind of customers or partners are you currently working with, or looking to work with next?
Our main scientific partner is the University of Foggia, specifically the STAR Facility Centre Lab, led by the exceptional Prof. Matteo Francavilla, an internationally recognized chemist. We are also collaborating with major oil and gas corporations on potential technological partnerships and future commercialization agreements, helping them decarbonize their operations. At the same time, we’re engaging with recyclers looking for disruptive solutions to handle their battery and electronic waste.
What's next for AraBat? Any upcoming milestones or goals you'd like to share?
Recently, we were granted a patent in Italy for our bio-based recycling system, which we plan to expand internationally this summer. We’ve also established a subsidiary in Delaware, USA - AraBat US Corp. - to tap into the American market and its resources. Moving forward, we aim to file a new (top-secret!) patent, successfully close our fundraising round, secure public incentives, and build our Laboratory Hub. This facility will allow us to work on larger battery and biomass volumes, scaling our technology and even developing new solutions, such as recycling other types of industrial waste.
