Turning waste into a refining process
An animation of the Oyster electro-extraction process — how end-of-life batteries and scrap become refined critical metals.
Nth Cycle refines critical metals out of waste. Its electro-extraction technology recovers nickel, cobalt and other metals from end-of-life batteries, scrap and low-grade ore using electricity rather than fossil fuel, so those metals re-enter electric vehicles and solar instead of being mined again. The company was founded by Megan O'Connor, named to TIME's hundred most influential climate leaders, and covered by Vanity Fair, Reuters, TechCrunch and the BBC.
Refining is not recycling, and that is the whole difficulty. This is a multi-stage chemical process — feedstock prepared, current applied, target metals separated and recovered to spec — and every step of it is unfamiliar to the investors, partners and customers who have to back it. The deadline was the ribbon-cutting at the company's first commercial plant in Ohio.
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The Oyster process
The full electro-extraction line, followed end to end: feedstock in, the plate stack opened up to show where the chemistry happens, refined metal out.
Outcome
The animation carried the Oyster process through the site refresh and into the run-up to the Ohio plant opening — the piece investors, partners and customers were pointed at when they needed to understand how waste becomes refined metal.
