The College of Engineering will provide key research and other services to a new grant from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to boost new technologies for the recovery and recycling of the critical minerals in end-of-life batteries.
LTU’s Centrepolis Accelerator will manage the grant of nearly $2.3 million to fund a project called “Autonomous Disassembly and Sorting of Batteries”—a major step toward reducing Michigan’s reliance on the extraction of new materials, while enhancing the state’s leadership in clean energy and sustainable technologies.
“This grant allows us to push forward cutting-edge AI and robotic solutions to enable financial viablility in Michigan and, at the same time, help reduce our dependence on raw material extraction,” said Dan Radomski, CEO of Centrepolis Accelerator. “We have put together a world-class team led by LTU’s College of Engineering robotics faculty with AI and automation technology companies and Michigan recycling firms. This project addresses a major national security concern, as the United States imports most of the materials used for domestic battery production from China and other parts of the world. It is critical that we secure end-of-life batteries and reprocess them in a cost-effective way to enable a local source of minerals that can be used again in Michigan and other domestic battery production operations.”
LTU faculty members involved in the research include James Mynderse, associate professor, and Gaurav Singh, assistant professor, both in LTU’s A. Leon Linton Department of Mechanical, Robotics, and Industrial Engineering, and Yawen Li, associate professor and chair of the LTU Department of Biomedical Engineering.
Said Mynderse of the grant: “This award will leverage LTU’s automation experience to tackle a critical weakness in the domestic battery production supply chain. We are excited to work with our industrial partners to advance the state of battery recycling and provide valuable experience to our students.”
The research will also be supported by industry partners, including UHV Technologies, supplying an automated battery sorting system; Molg AI, contributing elements of an artificial intelligence drive automated micro-factory; Munro & Associates, which will benchmark existing disassembly processes and analyze manual and automated systems; Great Lakes Recycling, which will serve in an advisory support role and supply end-of-life battery cells and modules; PADNOS, which will also serve in an advisory support role and supply end-of-life battery cells and modules; and Goodwill Industries of West Michigan, which will supply end-of-life batteries of various types.
