Featured in Further upstream – 10-2024

A question of chemistry

A typical mid-sized battery materials processing facility can produce 50,000 tons of waste sodium sulfate per year, most of which currently goes to landfill. Bilen Aküzüm, chief technology officer (CTO) of California-based startup Aepnus, explains how the company uses an electrolysis process to convert this waste back into usable chemicals for the battery industry.

By

Mark Hutchins

04 Oct 2024

Aepnus founders Lukas Hackl, left, and Bilen Aküzüm. | Photo: Aepnus

Aepnus began in 2019 with two friends considering new ways to apply skills they learned at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to the energy transition and the battery energy storage industry.Visiting battery material supply chain businesses, Bilen Aküzüm and Lukas Hackl noted that the refining of battery materials, whether …

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