Green Fee-funded trial of wet shredders for EOL lithium-ion batteries

Use Green Fee funds to subsidize a trial run of container-sized wet shredders at a suitable site in Hawaii, at a cost of roughly 2.1 million through installation, to preprocess End of Life lithium-ion batteries (EoL LIBs) into non-flammable and non-explosive materials (black mass) acceptable to mainland recyclers. Background: the submitter is the lead author of four reports on disposal options of clean energy waste; the initial report (submitted in time for the state legislature's first regular session of 2023) examined projected waste volumes, disposal and recycling methods, collection and transportation needs, potential fee and producer-responsibility mechanisms of PV panels, and introduced risks to continued ocean-shipping access for EOL lithium-ion batteries. Three subsequent reports, the last two prepared for the Hawaii State Energy Office in preparation for their current working group, analyzed three potential remedies to the expanding volume of used "waste" EOL lithium-ion battery generated in Hawaiʻi. The working groups concluded that Hawai'i faces an unacceptable risk regarding long-term affordable access to ocean shipping of EoL LIBs, and that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws would provide a null solution for Hawaii owing to fire risks restricting affordable access to ocean shipping (EPR laws are fundamentally dependent upon low cost unrestricted access to ocean shipping). Without preprocessing, Hawaii will suffer unacceptably high levels of EoL LIBs dumped illegally, shipped unsafely in mixed cargo or inappropriately labeled as universal waste, or simply diverted to H-power — outcomes that can cause accidents with significant losses to property and even life and disrupt insurance markets for all residents of Hawaii. Wet shredding is now the industry standard for recycling EoL LIBs, and emerging "off the shelf" and "turn key" wet shredders are small enough to fit into ocean cargo containers, suited for distributed distribution across multiple islands given Hawaii's island geography. Trial test data on safety, process requirements, efficiency and output quality of the shredded battery (black mass) would be exceptionally valuable to the state of Hawaii. The Rocky Mountain Institute did a similar study for the Bahama's and largely came to the same conclusion: isolated islands dependent upon ocean shipping will need to provide on site preprocessing technologies that fully deactivate the EoL LIB's to non flammable and non explosive non-battery materials. Contact for further discussion: mcooney@hawaii.edu (or mjcoahu@gmail).