Metastable Materials, a Bengaluru-based urban mining startup founded in October 2021, is developing an eco-friendly solution to reduce the overall life-cycle cost of lithium-ion batteries. With its chemical-free technology, the startup can extract a wide range of materials from lithium-ion batteries, achieving over 90% recovery rate, making electric vehicle applications more affordable. The company has raised undisclosed funding from investors too.
The name ‘Metastable’ is derived from a state of matter that lies in between the stable and the unstable state; it is a perfect analogy for the industry based around urban mining, which is neither stable – because of existing non-scalable methodologies, out of date processes and ineffective supply-chains, nor unstable – as these processes at least exists, although how effective they would be in handling the growing pile of e-waste is a matter of serious concern. The term ‘Metastable’ thus serves as a constant reminder that the startup needs to consistently push themselves towards developing a sustainable approach for ‘urban mining’ and they will not rest until they have fulfilled this mission.
Metastable’s operations are solely based on the novel ‘waste-as-ores’ approach for ‘urban mining’, wherein the startup is committed to ‘value creation from waste’ by extracting metals out of dead (end-of-life) batteries to fulfil the existing demand of these materials across various industries. After extraction, the materials can be used to make anything from medicines to industrial products to jet engines, and of course, for new batteries. This in turn would reduce India’s dependence on other countries to import specialty metals and build its own infrastructure to manufacture lithium-ion cells, which it currently lacks.
Notably, the value of the end-of-life lithium-ion batteries is projected to be US$ 30 billion globally, with a sizeable chunk of it being expected to be contributed by the Indian market. The LiB batteries’ waste, combined with other e-wastes, provide a lucrative opportunity and a competitive advantage for anyone in terms of extracting the metals through urban mining in an economic manner. The entire infrastructure required to extract value out of it has to be built over the next decade, and this is where Metastable steps in and is poised to play a pivotal role in the near future.
Building upon its materials engineering competency, Metastable’s extraction/treatment processes are being designed to minimize waste and to provide improved efficiency. Furthermore, the battery treatment methodology used by Metastable Materials also significantly reduces capital expenditure and operational expenditure in comparison to conventional battery recycling practices/methods. Currently, the industrial engineering team at Metastable is working on designing, fabricating and testing the equipment with vendors, while their process engineering team is focused on improving the process efficiency. As a result of Metastable’s focus on design and fabrication of equipment to carry out their processes, it has led them to the creation of IPs and filing of 4 patents as of date, along with more patents to be filed soon.
Last but not the least, Metastable Materials is currently making rapid strides towards setting-up their first pilot plant, which shall be able to handle 4 to 6% of India’s end-of-life Li-ion batteries treatment value chain, and thereafter the startup aspires to expand and put up a larger plant in order to tackle global needs. As a show of trust in their processes, they have already received interests from several key players in the market to both supply end-of-life batteries for processing and purchasing extracted materials out of them.
