Bengaluru-based Metastable Materials, a startup that extracts metals from lithium ion batteries, has just started commercial operations, the company’s co-founder and Chief of Industrial Engineering, Manikumar Uppala, says.
The company says it owns a unique technology called ‘integrated carbothermal reduction’. Simply put, the process involves shredding used batteries, taking out the (lithium-based) cathode and the graphite anode and putting them in a furnace. At 600 degrees C, the carbon (graphite) reacts with the lithium to form lithium carbonate, which dissolves in water. Evaporate the water and you are left with lithium carbonate, for which there is a market. For other metals, Metastable has other methods, such as magnetic separation.
Uppala says the Metastable process is environment-friendly and superior to hydrometallurgy, which involves using chemicals that need to be disposed of safely, while the pyrometallurgy method calls for temperatures above 1,200 degrees C and gives low yield.
Metastable was set up in 2021. The next year, it raised $150,000 pre-seed funding and set up an R&D laboratory in Bengaluru. Later, during the seed funding round, Sequioa (now renamed Peak XV Partners), Speciale Invest and Theia Ventures invested an undisclosed sum.
Now the startup wants to ramp up capacity from 500 to 5,000 kg per day.