Bringing Lithium-Ion Battery Waste tozero

Project Information

ToZero

Grant agreement ID: 101189288

DOI

10.3030/101189288

EC signature date 22 November 2024

Start date 1 December 2024

End date 30 November 2026

Funded under

• The European Innovation Council (EIC)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 2 499 952,00

Coordinated by

TOZERO GMBH
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ToZero (Bringing Lithium-Ion Battery Waste tozero)

Reporting period: 2024-12-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This EIC Accelerator project tackles two linked challenges in Europe’s battery value chain. First, large volumes of battery-derived waste remain difficult to recycle, especially for lithium and graphite, which are not effectively recovered through many traditional recycling routes. Second, the EU faces a strategic supply vulnerability: lithium and natural graphite are critical raw materials, and Europe still relies heavily on imports to meet industrial demand.

The ToZero project turns this problem into a supply opportunity: battery waste contains these critical raw materials currently imported from outside the EU. By recovering valuable constituents from waste streams and returning them into European supply chains, recycling becomes a direct lever for critical raw material security.

Within the project, tozero plans to build a demonstrator processing facility that can process approximately 500 tonnes of battery “black mass” (a concentrated intermediate from battery recycling) to recover lithium and graphite as usable products. The theoretical annual output from this process is >80 tonnes per year of lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE) and >100 tonnes per year of graphite. These quantities represent a meaningful step toward establishing reliable, EU-based secondary raw material streams, reducing reliance on external supply while keeping value and resilience within Europe.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The project builds on a validated pilot-scale process, where technical feasibility has already been demonstrated. In parallel, early commercial traction was proven in March of 2024 when tozero became the first company in Europe to sell recycled lithium back into the European market.

Within the ToZero project, the company has developed its go-to-market strategy and its extraction and purification systems on pilot before transferring it to industrial scale in its first-of-a-kind (FOAK) plant. The FOAK, the main achievement of the EIC-Accelerator project, has two main dimensions:

- Scale-up in throughput and equipment size (pilot → industrial)
- Operational mode shift from batch processing to continuous processing

The move to continuous operation is essential to demonstrate that the technology can run reliably under industrial conditions and can be operated commercially, not just in campaign-based pilot runs.

A clear indicator of this industrialization step for tozero is the relocation of activities to Chemiepark Gendorf—an environment designed for large-scale chemical operations. This supports (i) alignment with the permitting and regulatory requirements needed for industrial processing and (ii) execution of the scale-up surrounded by established chemical industry infrastructure and standards, reinforcing credibility that the process is being developed for real-world, commercial deployment. tozero has already successfully reach all target recycling goals on pilot scale and is operating its extraction units within the FOAK.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The EIC-Accelerator project will demonstrate that the innovative and proprietary hydrometallurgical recycling process developed by tozero is commercially ready. Acting as a blueprint for future commercial expansion the process is tested not only at scale but with high throughput, commercially relevant operational processes that have regulatory approval and will produce market fit products at high recovery rates.

The EIC project has continued to build on tozero’s successes, now scaling 20,000 times since initiation without dropping recovery rate below 80% nor losing market fit of the products. The FOAK is currently extracting at the rate of 500 tonnes of black mass per year with recovery rates of >80%, 6 years ahead of EU 2031 targets. Go-to-market strategy has continued to show that there is a high interest for tozero’s products among its target ideal customer profile (ICP).

Projects like the ToZero project are fundamental to strength the EU supply chain and increase critical raw material independence since they act as springboard towards future commercial projects.

Beyond the ToZero project, the company with continue to build on its demonstrator, developing more automation systems throughout the entire plant, expand its ICP for all products, widening the impact of the recycling process on the European market, and continue to optimise the technological efficiency using the results from the EIC project. In this next chapter regulatory speed will continue to be a key focus in allowing tozero to scale at the accelerated rate it is demonstrating. This will also be a fundamental pillar in general for the EU to support innovative projects and secure critical raw materials from waste stream within the EU.