The startup plucking critical minerals from battery waste using chicken feed

As we prepare to hand nominations for Australia’s 50 Most Innovative Manufacturers 2025 over to our judges, we look at an ASX-listed battery recycling company commercialising “deep eutectic solvent” research from the University of Adelaide. Brent Balinski speaks to IonDrive CEO Dr Ebbe Dommisse.

There are a lot of ways to not make it when trying to commercialise new technology, and a lot of things a metaphorical hammer might be swinging at that aren’t actually nails. 

Dr Ebbe Dommisse, CEO of University of Adelaide spinout business IonDrive, has held senior roles at quite a few companies since finishing a PhD in chemistry, and has seen ways to get things wrong.

“Going through several advanced manufacturing organisations in my career – some of them [were] new ventures with new technologies that ended up being a solution looking for a problem,” Dommisse tells @AuManufacturing.

IonDrive is commercialising a deep eutectic solvent-based (DES) approach to reclaiming critical minerals from black mass, a shiny, metallic pile of shredded, end-of-life batteries. The company’s DES chemistry is fascinating, says Dommisse, but most importantly the evidence from engineering and other studies so far shows technical feasibility, commercial viability, and desirability to the intended market.

A large contributor to the desirability is a large predicted output of black mass coming online as EVs and other lithium battery-powered items go offline.

Market research cited by the company sees 11 million tonnes a year of the stuff produced globally by 2040. 

“It’s worth mentioning that one of the components that goes into the deep eutectic solvents is a substance called choline chloride, which is actually a chicken feed: it’s an additive or a nutrient for chicken feed.”

Current methods of salvaging metals are divided into pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy processing types, which are energy-hungry or use harsh acids or bases as reagents.

Europe (the first target market for IonDrive) and other Western nations lack capacity to process black mass, and — way before that — lack access to the ingredients to make their own batteries. 

“If we look at China dominating the electric vehicle and battery manufacturing industry… they have been very, very smart at establishing an industry over the last two decades and now 80 per cent market share in producing batteries,” says Dommisse.

“But where they’ve been really smart is not only creating that capacity to produce the batteries, but also they’ve sewn up all the supply chains of those critical minerals that go into the batteries. So typically cobalt that comes from Congo, nickel from Indonesia, lithium from Australia and so on. 

“So jurisdictions like Europe and the US, even though they’ve got all the aspirations to have sovereign capabilities in the energy transition – so making electric vehicles and batteries that go into those electric vehicles – those jurisdictions don’t have access to the critical minerals.”

Investors recently showed faith in the company’s progress via a $6 million capital raise, announced in December, which will support a pilot plant scheduled to be commissioned this year.

According to the company, its DES liquids are “benign, biodegradable organic solvents”, the vast volume of which can be reused after processing, and are highly tuneable to selectively recover different types of metal. 

“It’s worth mentioning that one of the components that goes into the deep eutectic solvents is a substance called choline chloride, which is actually a chicken feed: it’s an additive or a nutrient for chicken feed,” adds Dommisse.

After pre-treatment to remove contaminants, black mass goes through four different solvents, with about 98 per cent of metals extracted.

Dommisse recalls a dumbed-down example of the steps he gave for his daughter’s STEM class.

“The first step would be like a teabag, where if you put the teabag in hot water – and by the way, water is a very, very good solvent – the water then extracts the tea. And then you take the teabag and you put it in another flask containing ethanol – which is also a very good solvent – and the ethanol then leaches out the tannins,” he explains.  

“So we’ve got a process with four different stages, each with different solvents that very selectively remove first the lithium, then the nickel, the cobalt, then the manganese.” 

A secondary focus for IonDrive is to further process these into precursors of cathode active materials (pCAM) for resale. Other projects include safer lithium batteries and aqueous sodium batteries.  

Its agreement with University of Adelaide covers exclusive rights to licence and acquire the IP of three battery projects “including relevant patents”.

The company has access to scientific discoveries produced by a team including two Laureate Professors. So is there a strong point of view on what makes a company innovative or not, and is it to do with academic excellence?

Dommisse brings up Professor Göran Roos, a Swedish researcher and advisor to many governments around the world on innovation and related topics (including, for a time, the South Australian and federal governments.)  .    

“He’s got a lovely definition of innovation. He says ‘invention is a solution looking for a problem, and innovation makes money.’ And the second thing that he taught me was when he was in Finland at VTT, which is the equivalent of the CSIRO, they had an incubator for new ventures,” Dommisse recalls.

“And the only criterion for eligibility into the incubator is you have to have a customer. So if you don’t have a customer, you don’t get incubated. And the lesson learned there is if you want to be successful in technology innovation you really need to work with your customers and understand what the customers’ needs are. Otherwise you design solutions looking for a problem.” 

In this episode of @AuManufacturing Conversations, Dommisse tells us more about “solvometallurgy”, some lessons on the battery industry we could borrow from the EU, and more. It can be streamed below or downloaded from most podcast platforms.

Episode guide

1:15 – Career background. 

2:30 – Established as a University of Adelaide spinout. Information about the research at the university and the transition from exploration company Southern Gold to what the company does now.

4:04 – An explanation of black mass and what’s in it.

5:30 – Black mass and its importance in terms of supply chain sovereignty. 80 per cent of it is shipped back to China for processing because nations like the US and the EU lack the capacity. 11 million tonnes is predicted to be on-market by 2040.

6:59 – An explanation of deep eutectic solvents, which are behind IonDrive’s processing technology, contrasted with hydrometallurgy and pyrometallugy families of metals recovery.  

8:50 – A closed loop process without the waste streams or energy demands of other recycling types used for battery materials.

10:08 – A simplified explanation of Deep Eutectic Solvent processing involving teabags. 

13:10 – Pilot plant commissioning in late-2025 and the activities leading up to this to determine if the technology would scale up viably.

15:25 – It’s not a value chain, it’s a value circle, with IonDrive addressing black mass processing and creating PCAM. 

16:20 – Recent capital raise and starting with semi-continuous work in January, the first step in moving from batch to continuous processes. To be completed in two months. 

17:48 – Countries including Australia don’t need to reinvent the wheel on battery materials processing. Where the country can make a difference and borrow from what the EU has done (e.g. banning black mass exports and implementing the battery passport.)

20:04 – Thomas Friedman’s observations on China capitalising on lithium iron phosphate (LFP) 

22:57 – What makes a company innovative. Goran Roos’s “lovely definition” of innovation and what we can learn from one incubator in Finland. 

24:50 – Let’s not confuse innovation with invention.

25:40 – Long-termism and the kind of manufacturing that works in Australia. An investigation comparing Switzerland with Australia. What we have here that can be leveraged.

Pictures: supplied