Princeton NuEnergy Inc. has been selected to enter award negotiations for a $50 million U.S. Department of Energy grant supporting construction of a battery recycling facility in Commerce, Georgia.

The proposed $110 million project includes $60 million in company cost share and would establish a 3,000-tonnes-per-year facility for recycling nickel-based lithium-ion battery manufacturing scrap.

The facility will use Princeton NuEnergy’s low-temperature plasma-assisted separation (LPAS) technology to recover and rejuvenate cathode active material for use in battery manufacturing.

The project is designed as a closed-loop system located alongside battery manufacturing operations. Princeton NuEnergy says the process could return rejuvenated cathode active material to manufacturing in approximately seven days.

The company also estimates that its process can produce rejuvenated cathode active material at roughly 45% below the cost of comparable virgin material, while preserving the structure of the cathode material.

The facility is expected to create 70 full-time manufacturing jobs and approximately 100 construction jobs.

Princeton NuEnergy said the project will provide a commercial demonstration of its Cathode-to-Cathode platform and establish a basis for additional deployments across the U.S. battery manufacturing industry.

Following a successful demonstration, the company plans to deploy as many as 10 additional privately financed production lines. Those lines could increase total capacity to approximately 30,000 tonnes per year by 2035.

More than 90% of the proposed facility’s equipment is expected to consist of standard industrial equipment. Princeton NuEnergy also plans to use data analytics and artificial intelligence for process optimization and predictive maintenance.

The project is supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and Manufacturing Deployment Office.