Aepnus wants to create a circular economy for key battery materials

Earlier this 12 months, BASF had to just do that delay opening constructing a battery materials factory in Finland when a court agreed with environmental groups that the corporate didn’t have a good plan for coping with wastewater.

As battery factories are built around the globe, the specter of wastewater threatens to halt their construction. However, one start-up claims that the answer shouldn’t be disposal, but recycling.

Wastewater from these plants flows with sodium sulfate, a byproduct of sulfuric acid and caustic soda, two chemicals utilized in battery production, copper refining and other industries.

“We can create a completely circular economy around these chemicals” – Bilen Akuzum, co-founder and CTO of the corporate Aepnus technologyhe told TechCrunch.

Akuzum and co-founder Lukas Hackl didn’t set out to create a small circular economy, as a substitute they stumbled upon it while touring lithium mining facilities in California and Nevada. A pair of chemists who had been friends since they met of their college cafeteria were exploring possible startup ideas.

“We were thinking about lithium mining or something else in the minerals space,” Akuzum said. “Every time we talked to someone in the industry, they would say, ‘Well, there are actually solutions for lithium extraction. But our activities produce waste and we really don’t know what to do with it.”

After getting back from their trip, Akuzum and Hackl thought in regards to the idea and ultimately decided to improve existing technology to turn this waste into raw materials that the facilities could use of their operations.

The two founded Aepnus to modernize the century-old chloralkali process, which breaks down salts equivalent to sodium sulfate back into the acids and bases that created them.

The company uses electrolyzers to destroy salt, causing it to decompose. Other firms do the identical thing, but may use expensive metals to speed up the reactions. “We don’t use any expensive catalysts in our electrolysers,” Akuzum said.

Aepnus currently ships half-scale models of its devices to customers, who can test the devices in their very own wastewater streams. Wastewater from each plant may contain various pollutants, a few of which should be filtered beforehand. Once they’re depleted, the electrolyzers can start removing sodium sulfate.

For customers, full recycling of sodium sulfate waste should reduce disposal and material costs. And for individuals with distant locations, equivalent to miners, in addition they save on transportation. “Instead of mining companies purchasing these chemicals and trucking them very long distances, we can regenerate them on site from waste,” Akuzum said.

The startup has over 15 clients in various stages, from feasibility studies to testing equipment on a pilot scale. Aepnus recently raised an $8 million seed round to supply more electrolyzers on a pilot scale and develop a commercial-scale version. The round was led by Clean Energy Ventures with participation from Gravity Climate Fund, Impact Science Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital, Muus Climate Partners and Voyager Ventures.

If Aepnus can produce electrolyzers on a business scale, it’ll be a milestone for the United States. “There are only a few companies around the world that have the expertise to build this type of electrolyzers,” Akuzum said. “Unfortunately, there is not a single company in the United States that has this expertise.”