American Battery Technology Company (ABTC), an integrated critical battery materials company, announced its entrance into the US Department of Energy’s Battery Workforce Challenge, with the newly developed “Design for Recyclability” category for this three-year collegiate and vocational engineering competition.
This competition supports 12 North American teams of universities and their regional vocational partners that are each designing, building, testing, and integrating a next-generation advanced lithium-ion battery pack and electric powertrain into a Stellantis’ donated 2024 Ram ProMaster EV.
ABTC’s entrance into this competition brings an additional dimension of performance in the evaluation of these designs, as students are now challenged to design battery packs with a design for recyclability (DFR) mindset that allows for these complex batteries to be strategically disassembled and recycled at the end of their lives.
These high-value components within the batteries can then be recovered and resold into the domestic North American supply chain to create a closed-loop circular infrastructure, increasing the residual value of the battery pack and lowering the overall lifecycle costs of EVs.
“We work directly with many of the premier automotive OEMs and receive large amounts of current and next generation prototype battery packs, and these pack designs are becoming increasingly complex with the proliferation of cell-to-pack, advanced passive propagation resistance, and hybrid cell chemistry designs,” explained ABTC CEO Ryan Melsert.
This new “Design for Recyclability” methodology embeds within the next-generation of EV and battery engineers the importance of designing battery systems that can be strategically de-manufactured and recycled at their end of lives, and of using materials and designs to facilitate this closed-loop circular mindset to return end-of-life materials to the battery manufacturing supply chain.
The category focuses on areas such as 3D modeling, dynamic simulations, lifecycle modeling, and economic impact, introducing students to Argonne National Laboratory ReCell’s BatPaC, GREET, and EverBatt Models, for calculating lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions, economic impacts, and ensuring that end-of-life materials are re-introduced into the domestic supply chain.
Training and guidance from ABTC will help steer new and innovative battery pack designs towards more environmentally and economically sustainable materials and practices.
The Battery Workforce Challenge is sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and Stellantis and managed by Argonne National Laboratory. It provides future engineers and technicians real-life experiences to shape new energy efficient mobility solutions.
ABTC will also support other initiatives within the Battery Workforce Challenge Program, including efforts to establish regional workforce training hubs nationwide that will step into critical skill gaps and identify areas to reskill and upskill vocational and transitional workers for in-demand EV and battery manufacturing and recycling jobs.
Filed Under: Batteries, Technology News