Another huge Breakthrough for $1 stock.- Oh The black mass Van is so beautiful...
Aqua Metals produces high purity nickel in metal form 08:18 AQMS Aqua Metals, has achieved an additional milestone in proving its recycling technology by plating high purity nickel metal, one atom at a time, from black mass created from a variety of lithium-ion batteries. This achievement supports the expectation that Aqua Metals' Li AquaRefining potentially has strong economic and environmental advantages over other lithium-ion recycling processes in use or under development. High purity nickel enables a streamlined process for producing lithium battery-grade material. Aqua Metals' early test production of nickel sulfate, a compound often used in battery precursor material, showed promising results. Nickel is a key component in lithium-ion batteries as it can pack a lot of energy per battery while allowing battery producers to reduce the use of cobalt, which is more expensive. According to Stockhead, nickel demand for lithium-ion batteries could grow by 567% by 2025, compared to 2019 levels. The exponential growth in demand for nickel due to the global expansion of EVs has resulted in a correlating and unprecedented surge in nickel prices. The nickel market was already exceptionally tight due to supply concerns in Indonesia, the top producer of nickel, but this was greatly exacerbated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, as Russia is one of the world's largest suppliers of the metal. Russia's invasion and subsequent sanctions resulted in nickel prices hitting record-breaking levels in March, increasing as much as 60% in one day, one of the most extreme moves ever seen on the metal markets. Today nickel trades at more than $32,000 per ton, up more than 100% over the past year. Aqua Metals believes its Li AquaRefining process has the lowest environmental footprint of any technology under development. It recycles spent lithium-ion batteries in a clean, economical way that is fundamentally non-polluting by utilizing the renewable electron as the reagent instead of chemicals or high heat. Aqua Metals believes that AquaRefining has the potential to be a superior solution to solely mining for critical metals, and one of the most effective ways of achieving President Biden's Presidential Invocation of Defense Production Act for Battery Materials national security goal to secure a domestic supply chain for critical and strategic battery metals through environmentally and socially responsible means. To date, the Company has also produced high-purity lithium hydroxide and copper from lithium-ion battery black mass at the Company's Innovation Center in the Tahoe-Reno Industrial Center. Through the development of AquaRefining for lead batteries, Aqua Metals is the only company that has experience building a commercial clean metals recycling technology. Aqua Metals will continue to update the market as meaningful progress is made.
