South Korea's ISU Specialty Chemicals Accelerates Waste Battery Recycling Business

ISU Specialty Chemicals, based in South Korea, announced that it is accelerating its business of supplying diluents to waste battery recycling companies.

Recently, interest in waste battery recycling has significantly increased as the battery market has rapidly grown. Waste battery recycling is considered an important means of reducing dependence on overseas sources of key minerals. Major domestic companies such as Sungil Hitech, POSCO, and Ecopro are also pursuing or considering the construction of waste battery recycling plants.

In the waste battery recycling process, the extraction process using hydrometallurgy is essential for recovering key minerals used in battery manufacturing, such as cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, and copper. This process necessarily involves the use of solvents and diluents, such as 'extraction agents' and 'demulsifiers'.

ISU Specialty Chemicals has been producing the industrial solvent demulsifier (D-Sol) for about 30 years, supplying it to various industries including metalworking fluids, cleaning solvents, and inks.

To preempt the waste battery recycling diluent market, the company launched a new brand, 'ISU REX 110'. Additionally, in October last year, it signed a business agreement with EAPHOS, a domestic extraction agent manufacturer, to promote the package sales of extraction agents and diluents.

ISU Specialty Chemicals completed the large-scale supply of over 1,000 tons of diluent to a new plant of the largest domestic waste battery recycling company, S, which is scheduled to start operations in June, following its supply to the existing plant. The company is also in technical discussions with major domestic and international waste battery recycling companies to supply diluents.

Ryu Seung-ho, CEO of ISU Specialty Chemicals, stated, "Many companies are expanding their waste battery-related businesses in response to the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the EU Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). Based on this large-scale supply, we plan to expand our market dominance in the waste battery recycling diluent market."