Electra Provides Update on Black Mass Recycling - Seite 2

The Company has developed proprietary hydrometallurgical technology that targets all of the critical minerals present in the black mass as saleable products. Once recovered, the products can further be upgraded to battery grade materials and reused by gigafactories to produce batteries or other products.

Additional Black Mass Program Highlights:

• Electra has processed 40 tonnes of black mass material in a plant scale setting, believed to be the first of its kind in North America.
• Recovery rates for all targeted metals – lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite, and manganese - have improved since the start of the trial in December 2022.
• Approximately 28 tonnes of nickel-cobalt MHP product have been shipped to customers.
• Reagent requirements were reduced and in some cases alternative, less costly, reagents were used for improved overall metal recovery. Further, some of the reagent additions substituted have reduced overall impurity levels within the process. The reduction in reagent use and substitution of certain reagents are expected to lower operating expenses, thereby improving the economics of continuous recycling operations.

Black mass is the industry term used to describe the material remaining once expired lithium-ion batteries are shredded and all casings removed. Black mass contains high-value elements, including lithium, nickel, cobalt, manganese, copper, and graphite, that once recovered, can be recycled to produce new lithium-ion batteries.

Established North American battery recyclers have focused on collecting and shredding of batteries with the resulting black mass material primarily exported, or treated by a pyrometallurgical smelting process that has a higher carbon footprint and lower metal recoveries than hydrometallurgical processes.

About Electra Battery Materials

Electra is a processor of low-carbon, ethically sourced battery materials. Currently focused on developing North America’s only cobalt sulfate refinery and a black mass demonstration plant, Electra is executing a multipronged strategy to onshore the electric vehicle supply chain. Keys to its strategy are integrating black mass recycling and nickel sulfate production at Electra’s cobalt refinery located north of Toronto, advancing Iron Creek, its cobalt-copper exploration-stage project in the Idaho Cobalt Belt, and expanding cobalt sulfate processing into Bécancour, Quebec. For more information, please visit www.ElectraBMC.com.