July 3, 2025 • 35 mins
Megan O’Connor is the co-founder and CEO of Nth Cycle. Megan’s problem is this: How do you create a new system that can both refine the raw metals we need for new batteries and recycle metal from old batteries?
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. So the world is basically just starting this massive
shift from fossil fuels to a combination of renewable energy
and battery storage. This is good news. I hope it
happens as quickly as possible, but it is going to
(00:36):
be a massive, complicated, hard transition. One of the many
ways in which it is complicated and hard is building
and dealing with all those batteries we're going to need.
At a basic level, takes a lot of metal, a
lot of nickel, a lot of cobalt, just to make
all the batteries we're going to need, And mining and
(00:58):
refining those metals is a thing that basically doesn't happen
in the US or in Europe anymore, at least doesn't
happen at any significant scale, and for understandable reasons. Right,
this is an intense, often dirty, industrial process, and so
as you might guess, a huge share of industrial refining
of these kinds of metals now happens in China. And
(01:20):
on top of getting the metal out of the ground
and refined in the first place, there's a second complication.
Batteries wear out. What do we do with all that
potentially useful metal once a battery has finished its useful
life as a battery. So just to sum up to recap,
the world needs a huge new supply of batteries, but
especially in the US and Europe, it's not clear how
(01:44):
we can get the metal we need to make all
those batteries, and it's also not clear what we should
do with those batteries when they wear out. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Megan O'Connor. She's the co founder
(02:07):
and CEO of a company called en Cycle, like the
letter in and then thh and then cycle. Megan's problem
is this, can you come up with an efficient system
that can both refine the raw metals we need for
batteries and recycle old batteries to extract that metal so
it can be used again in new batteries. Megan told
(02:29):
me that she first had the idea for the company
when she was getting her PhD in environmental engineering. Her
PhD is from Duke, but the idea actually came out
of this meeting she went to at Yale and it
was weirdly hard for her to get in the door
of that meeting.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
One of the professors there was a head of the
Green Chemistry and Green Engineering school, and he wanted to
bring industry in to help really direct the center's research
to what industry cares about.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So that's one of the reasons why I went to
grad school, is like work on something that industry really
cares about and that has a real problem. And I
overheard him talking about this green Electronic summit in the
hallway a couple weeks before, and it was completely clear
off to students. So it was supposed to be like
a closed door meeting with these like you know, large
consumer electronic OEMs, so like Apple, Dell, Intel, folks who
(03:19):
make our cell phones and laptops and things. And I
really wanted to be in this room even though it
was closed off to students and other faculty. So what
I had to do is banged down this professor's door
for three weeks straight, and I think he finally just
gave in and staid, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Badgering is an underrated strategy.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I'm very determined, which I think you'll hear a lot
of entrepreneurs say. But I really wanted me in this meeting,
say like, okay, does industry actually care about any of
this that I've been researching? Right, And so he finally
let me in as a scribe, said all right, I
need somebody to take notes. Come in and take notes
for nine hours. So I sat there and over and
over and over again in this in this summit, every
single manufacturing company in there said the same two things. One,
(04:00):
they have no idea what At the time this was
ten years ago, they didn't know what to do with
their waste. Right. They said, look, we're all trying to
be leaders in transparency, in the supply chains, sustainability, right,
whatever you want to call it. They wanted to be
leaders in that space for their consumers, but they don't
know and didn't know how they were going to deal
with the growing waste management problem.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So every time you buy a new cell phone or
every time you buy a new smart watch, right, where
does the where do those things end up? And so
they said, look, e waste, right, electronics waste is already
a massive problem around the world, and that we don't
really know how to solve. Imagine when these clean energy
technologies like electric vehicles, like wind turbines, like solar panels
(04:40):
start to come offline, those are considered electronics waste. Right,
it's just gonna it's going to exacerbate.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Orders of magnet orders of magnitude larger, right than a
cell phone electric car is just a driving battery as
a bat exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And so what are we going to do with all
this waste once we start generating it?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
As these companies they've said, you know, we want to
try to figure out how to take responsibility for this
in our supply chains, but we don't know how to
do that. And then the second round they all said,
is we don't know what our supply chains are going
to look like. Right again, a cell phone, you is
a couple of grams of cobalts, whereas an EV uses
orders of magnitude more metal in their batteries. And so
you think about we're already having supply chain issues and
(05:18):
accessing you know, that cobalt. What does that look like
when we start to hopefully manufacture and push out all
these much larger technologies.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Right, millions of election millions of electric.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Vehicles hopefully, And then you add the winterbines, and then
you add the solar panels, right, the same the same
things I said before, and it just the supply chains
just become bigger and bigger problem.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And so I walked to that.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Meeting feeling a like a little angry that like, how
are we barreling down this path again generating all this
waste when we have no way of dealing with it,
but then also feeling a little inspired and said, Okay,
we have all this waste. Is there a way and
is there a technology that exists out there to be
able to take that waste and turn it back into
metals so you can have a secondary supply of these
(06:02):
materials and sort of kill tubers with one stone.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Okay, So you have this this kind of big idea,
you talk about it with your advisor, a professor named
desire Plato, right, And then, as I understand it, you
and your advisor you think of this technology that a
Harvard professor had been working on, but not in this context, right,
working on for water filtration. So you go to this professor,
(06:26):
as I understand the story, his name is Chad Vesidas,
and is it right? Like you basically ask him if
you can try and apply his technique to recycle batteries
to refine metal. And then the three of you wind
up starting the company together. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
So I approached Chad and I said, hey, you don't
know me, but you know Desi a little bit, and
can I use your technology for this application?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
He said yes.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
This was my third year of my PhD, so for
folks out there, it's typically a five to six year program,
so I was already halfway through. So it was a
little crazy of me to switch my project that far in.
But I felt very strongly that, you know, there there
was a solution that was needed here, and I went
to grad school to try and find a problem and
provide a technology solution. So I sort of dove headfirst
into it. So for the next three years, Chad, Desree
(07:11):
and I, you know, continue to work on this technology together,
and by the end of my PhD, it worked so
well that I felt if I put the right team together,
I think this technology could really change the world. They
could change the way that we refine metal. This industry
hasn't had any type of technological change in decades, right,
Like I'm talking close to one hundred years, right, This
has been the same technology we've seen and it's clearly
(07:34):
not working here in the US. It hasn't been adopted here.
So this is where technology can really have an impact
for the clean energy economy.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I mean when you say the technology, I mean you
mean specifically refining metals. Basically, Right, you've got metals, whether
it's recycling and they're mixed up with a bunch of
other stuff, or they're coming out of the ground and
they're mixed up with a bunch of other stuff. The
fundamental thing is, how do you separate out the metal
you want, whatever, the lithium, the nickel, the cobalt. That's
the funny thing.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Exactly take from those sources, whether it's out of the
ground or out of some recycled end of life material,
and turn it back into basically something that's usable. Again,
that's what the chemical refining step does.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Why hadn't refining changed for one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Most of the refining that's sent around the world is
in the mining industry, right, So these mining companies typically
will develop an asset, a long life asset, and an
asset meaning just the mine itself where they dig the
dirt and the metals out of the ground, and then
they typically stand the refinery up literally right next door.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
They want to eliminate as much of that transportation as
possible because these metals are in such low concentration. It's
a lot of dirt to a little bit of metal, right.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
You don't want to move one hundred pounds of dirt
a thousand miles to get one pound of exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So the refining industry was really centered around this mining space.
And so it was only when folks really started to
look at the recycling space, and I talk battery recycling
specifically right now, it was like, Okay, you have this big,
multi billion dollar refinery where you process eighty thousand tons
(09:07):
of material per year, which is massive, and you have
a recycling industry where a again you don't have a
magic pile of eighty thousand tons of batteries right in
one place. And batteries are changing, right, There's different types
of batteries from different companies, they have different chemistries, which
just means it makes it really hard to recycle them
(09:27):
all in this one facility. And so just that model,
you know, doesn't match.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Some of those mining refineries will take a little bit
of recycled material, but again they're all overseas, right, So
then you come to that national security challenge and so.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And so the setting aside the overseas part that the
fundamental problem is they're built to process a huge amount
of some very homogeneous and consistent input for a long time.
Like that's the economic model, that's correct, and that's the
fundamental problem.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
That's the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So how do you do it?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We have developed a new technology we call electro extraction,
and so it's a it's a fancy word to say
that we use the same chemicals that you see in
refining today in those massive facilities I talked about, and
those are produced with fossil energy, so they're produced fossil
energy and then trucked to those sites. What we figured
out is to overcome the barrier of having to build
(10:23):
this massive facility, we could create a smaller, modular facility
to be able to process the smaller volumes of recycle
material that we have around the Western world by producing
the same chemicals with electricity, so we can produce them
when we need them, where we need them, and only
as much as we need them. And so that gives
us the efficiencies that we needed both from a cost
(10:44):
and energy perspective to be able to really scale down
that process instead of having to do eighty thousand tons
to justify this project per year, we only need to
do a minimum of two to three thousand tons per year.
So that allows us to work with all these different
recycling companies. And whether it's one type of battery or
(11:06):
nickel catalyst material, right, we process all different times types
of sort of scrap or end of life materials. And
we've overcome some big barriers to just getting refining capacity here,
both in the US and in Europe.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And is it right that you just turned on your
first real facility last second half of last year in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's right, and we just went live in September twenty
twenty four, so we're very excited. We have about eight
months of operations und our belt now.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So tell me about what's happening in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
In Ohio, So it's our refining system, which we call
the Oyster for shorts, and so our facility, it's a
big industrial warehouse. And basically what my system looks like,
I like to think of it as a deck of cards.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So our electrochemical filters, as I mentioned before, think of
their like big plastic cards. So they're one meter wide,
one meter tall, and I have one hundred and forty
of those sort of stacked in parallels to think of
like a sideways deck of cards. And so inside those
cells is where I pull out the metals like the
nickel and the cobalt that we want back out for manufacturers.
(12:11):
So when I get these shredded battery materials in, if
you walked into my facility today, you'd see a giant
tank on the left hand side facility. We'd dump that
shredded battery material into that tank. We dissolve it, and
so all those dissolved metals are in there.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So the shredded battery which is called black mass. Is
that right? You haven't said black mass. I'm sort of disappointed.
I was excited for you to state black mass.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yes, it's called black mass.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
It just it literally looks like black like flower, like
the flower that you'd bake with. It just looks like
a black version of that, which is very interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
So you get truckloads of black mass? Or did you
build your facility next to that of some company that
shreds batteries and creates black mass? Is that why you're there?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
The reason we chose Fairfield was because there's a lot
of just industrial scrap that finds its way to the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The black mass capital of the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There is a couple of black mass companies around there
that take the batteries and show them into black mass,
and then we also process other types of industrial scrap
like catalysts from the oil gas industry. So that area
is just rich with those types of companies.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So you've got your deck of cards. I like the
deck of cards. It's a metaphor. They're sort of stacked
a little spaced out. The black mass goes in one side,
you dissolve it into a liquid, and then what happens.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And then that liquid goes into our deca cards oyster system.
That's where the chemicals are being produced in those cells
to pull out the cobalt, to pull out the nickel,
and then they come out the other side as the
product that we can sell.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And are you actually buying the black mass and selling
the nickel? Are you in the nickel business?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
For this facility, we are so we called a merchant
facility where yes, we buy black mass from different partner
facilities and then we are selling the nickel product on
the other side of it. This will be the only
facility that we have that sort of again, I call
it a merchant facility for the business model, and we
did it for the first one again because it was
the first time that we've built the system at commercial scale,
so we wanted full site control.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
And then we also use it as a business development tool.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Right. Our traditional business model moving forward will be to
operate under what's called a tolling model, and so it's
really where we'll go on site with our partners and
Cycle will own and operate our system on their site,
and we'll charge them a fee per pound of save
battery or black mass that we process for them. So
think of almost like refining as a service, if you will.
(14:30):
So they'll own the feedstock, we'll charge them to process it,
and then they'll own the nickel product coming out on
the other side.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Because you don't want to be in the nickel business.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
As a young company, we wanted to only take the
risks we had to. Yeah, so we felt like, Okay,
we can handle the operational risk. It's our technology. We'll
do what we're good at, and then we'll let these
companies do it they're good at because they've been in
Remember these companies have been in the commodity business for decades.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Right or longer.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I mean, they're very skilled in like the logistics and
the collection and no.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Commodity business is crazy. Why would you want to do that?
If you have some technology, you believe it and let
other people solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, we want to be the technologists. We want to
be the technology provider. So that's our business model moving forward.
And so what we use OHIO for is really like
a tool to show them what the technology looks like.
We can process their material, you know, at lower volumes there,
to show them what we can do with it. It
de risks it on both sides as we're going into
this more partnership model with them in the future.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So we've been talking about nickel. I heard you talk
in earlier interviews about nickel in particular, or this nickel
product more specifically in particular as being acutely affected by
kind of legal and regulatory changes both in the US
and in Europe. In a way that is good for you, right,
in a way that like those may be about to
(15:46):
go away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
They are are they maybe us right, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yet, and they seem likely to be about.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Likely to go away. That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But I would say this administration also prioritizes critical minerals
just for other reasons, right, so more on the national
security side, and to really onchour our supply chain. So
there is equally as much demand for domestically produced materials,
just for a different reason. And so we still feel
like a ton of tailwinds with the executive orders, and
we'll see how that translates into policy in the next
(16:15):
couple of years.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So the end of the ev mandate is bad for you,
but high tariffs are good for you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I don't know if I put it like that, but
we are definitely taking advantage of the desire to have
on shoing of these critical and il supply chains and
being one of the companies in the space that's operational.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So I think it's a good signal.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
For us to scale quickly to be able to provide
both the military and again the folks who are still
pushing forward through the clean energy economy and the technologies
they're building, Right, they both need supply of these materials
they are used for.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Both pivoting from being an energy transition company to being
in an American energy dominance company. That's right, we same company, right,
different wrapper.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
It's very true both we need both of those things.
And then you know on the on the European side,
where they haven't had much change in terms of their
their regulatory environment as I like to think about it,
but they care about this again for a different reason.
They have something that's called the battery passport where they're
going to have to reduce the carbon footprint of their
batteries that are being produced. And it starts with the metals, right,
(17:14):
And so currently where you can source the vast majority
of the nickel around the world uses a technology that
is very carbon intensive.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
It's called HPAL.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
HPAL is the acronym if folks care to look that up.
But it's just a very very carbon intensive way to
produce this nickel out of the nickel mining that happens
in Indonesia, and it's so carbon intensive that it doesn't
meet those requirements. So Europe is forced to try and
find another source of these materials. And on top of that,
they have very strict recycling rates that they'll have to
(17:47):
hit over the next several years. It sort of forces
industry within the EU to develop recycling and refining technologies.
And then on top of that, if you do recycle
the batteries, there and you produce this black mass. They've
also now classified this black mass as a very specific
type of hazardous waste, which means that it's very difficult
(18:08):
and nearly impotus to ship the black mass between country
borders within the EU.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Uh huh. Arguably a self defeating regulation, but perhaps good
for your business, great for.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
End cycle because we are the only one of the
only modular technologies that can go into each country and
help them turn that black mass into a product that
they can easily move across borders. Right, So again, this
distributed modular refining approach is quickly becoming the only way
that they'll be able to solve these challenges within the EU.
And then I think similar to here in the US, right,
(18:41):
we have not been able to build sort of traditional
technology here.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So when are you going to turn on the first
oyster in Europe?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So the goal would be twenty twenty six. So we're
working with some partners now to try and solidify what
those projects will look like, but starting construction in twenty
twenty six is the goal.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So we've been talking about nickel. Is that going to
be your main output for a while? I mean, can
it be anything that's can it be lithium, Can it
be cobalt? Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yes, the main product out of the system is like
a mixture of cobalt and nickel. Actually it's called nickel MHP,
which is a very industry specific term. It's just a
nickel product. We also produce a lithium product out of
the black mass as well. And then in development, we
have a new system for copper, so a lot of
our partners have copper scrap. We're also talking some copper
mining companies about some of the issues they're having to
(19:29):
deploy the technology there.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And then we also have one for rare earths.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So the rare earths are the metals in think like
the magnets that are in your motors, in the wind
turbines that you might see hopefully in your backyard. So
it's two other systems to try and produce as much
of these critical minerals as we possibly can, because they
all face the same challenges, right, they're all refined. The
vestnory them are fined overseas, and it causes again a
(19:53):
big national security issue and just limits us into how
quickly we can build these technologies here in the US
and Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
We'll be back in just a minute. What's the rate
limiting step for you and expanding?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I'd say the rate limiting step for us now is
a combination of funding and just the team.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So, I think we're ready to go, and we will
be fundraising in the next several months to go out
and do these projects, and then with that funding, we'll
build the team that we need to go execute.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I mean, in terms of funding, if you sign a
contract with some company to do refining as a service
for them, can you borrow against that contract to build
the thing that they promised to pay you to use? Yeah,
Like a factory is a classic thing that it's collateral.
You could borrow money in it. Or is it not
collateral because nobody's ever built one before and the bank
doesn't try it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
We're somewhere in the middle. So we're in this for
folks out there who may be building or have heard
of other startups going through this phase, it's called like
the scale gap, the missing middle.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Huh, you got one and you want ten? And how
do you get there?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And you get the money?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Because we still have some technical risk right of course,
because it's a second of a kind and a first
of its kind.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Ohio is our first a kind.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So there's a whole bunch of folks who are dealing
with the same thing and trying to find like what
does that financing look like for this type of risk profile.
But there is money out there, and I do think
that again given the space that we're in and where
we are with with Ohio and the next projects, and
like you said, the contracts will be everything to show
that there is market poll for our technology.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
What are you trying to figure out now? What's sort
of the frontier for you?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So what we're trying to figure out now is how
do we translate this technology that we are expanding within
this scrap recycling space with into the mining space. I
think the whole goal of in Cycle was to try
and you know, create the most robust supply chains that
we possibly can for these critical minerals and you know,
build a clean energy economy on the cleanest source of materials.
(21:54):
You know what really killed me at the end of
the day when I was starting about thinking the company
is like, gosh, we are building this like quote unquote
clean energy economy on a dirty source of material So
we continue to make the same problems in industry that
we have in the past, and so that was really
like the core of why I wanted to start and
cycle and the application of scrap recycling came from that.
And then the goal and the dream is really to
(22:15):
start to do this in the mining space, because that's
where you can have like massive, massive impact. I mean,
there's just orders of magnitude more material process per year
from mine than there is from recycling. And the goal
is to eventually recycle enough material to have it all
in circulation so that you can just solely rely on recycling.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Even if you are recycling everything, assuming people are switching
to evs over time, you'll still need a lot of
new lithium and nickel and cobalt out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
For in the next several decades. Absolutely, So that's where
I think mining gets this bad rap. But we have
to continue to mine materials to push forward in the
clean energy economy. We like you said, there is not
enough recycling material out there to be even if you
recycled one hundred percent of it, it does not get
you enough cobalt and nickel or lithium or whatever material
you're looking at to be able to meet demand. But
(23:10):
what we're really targeting is how do you turn on
these existing or bodies that haven't been developed yet. Right,
So there is cobalt, there is nickel, there is copper.
Here in the US, there's not a ton of mining
that happens because the refining piece is so environmentally damaging, right,
and people don't want in their backyards.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And I wouldn't either.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I understand the sort of the pain with that. But
if you can develop a technology that overcomes and doesn't
have all the waste that's associated with the traditional refining
and can have the same unit economics and justify opening
up these smaller minds because they are much much smaller
than what you'd see overseas. Right, So again the technology
is a mismatch for the source of materials. That's really
(23:50):
where this innovation can have a major, major impact of
like getting more of these minds online and getting the
US to have a mining industry. Again, it's really the
technology that I think will unlock that. And that's sort
of the new frontier front cycle is is I have
a team of folks sort of looking at what are
the right applications in mining for US, and you know,
(24:11):
does the technology need to look any different. So the
chemistry basis, the cells will work exactly the same, it's
just the system will likely have to look different.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's refining either way. It's refining either way, refining now,
but instead of the input being black masks shredded up batteries,
it'll be a lot of dirt with a little.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Bit exactly exactly right.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So, there are a few other battery recycling companies in
the US, including one started by the guy who actually
started Tesla's aby, Redwood Materials. So tell me sort of
how how you fit in that broader context of the industry.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, there's many companies. Redwood is one of the largest
companies who works in the battery cycling space, especially here
in the US, and their strategy is battery to battery, right.
They are solely battery recyclers who want to produce some
type of end battery product. Forether it's a chemical that
goes into batteries, or the cathode that goes to the batteries,
or the battery itself. So what they're trying to do
(25:11):
is really build out that entire supply chain from collecting
the batteries shredding those batteries into black mass, they want
to refine those materials, and then they want to be
a manufacturer, So they.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Want to be a company that buys old batteries and sells.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Exactly And I think that's very needed in the space.
Right there's a lot of steps in the supply chain
that need to be built.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Here.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
What end cycle does is just the refining piece, and
so these companies are using very traditional technology from the
mining space, and so what we're providing and we partner
with a lot of these companies, is just a new
technology that is cheaper, more efficient to be able to
process these batteries.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Maybe that's like the wrong industry for me to be
thinking about. Is the right industry for me to be
thinking about? Refining? Is the right question? Who else is
trying to new and better ways.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Of There's not a ton of companies in the space.
There are a few of us who are solely focused
on the refining piece and who are trying to take
this modular approach. I would say we're one of the
only ones that takes more than batteries. There's a lot
of refining companies focused on black mass in particular. But
again we said, like, look, even if you're recycled one
hundred percent of batteries. You're not going to get enough nickel,
(26:19):
as we talked about earlier, or coboth or lithium. And
so from the beginning, you know, we tried to build
a technology that could be very flexible in the types
of materials we can put in on the front end.
And so I would say we're one of the only
companies in the space that diversified. But yeah, one or
two others in the US and Europe that are sort
(26:41):
of in the same exact space.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That we are. Why might you fail if you don't
make it? Why wouldn't you make it?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
One of the reasons we couldn't make it is if
technology adoption right, if we start to have massive shifts
in the regulatory environment, which some folks in the climate
technology space, which some people would put us in, are
showing to feel that now the market really slows and
startups need to move at a very fast pace and
make a lot of progress because we have limited cash right,
(27:08):
because we're fun raising to survive until we build systems
that can generate consistent cash flow. And so when markets
slow down is when startups die.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
And in your case, is that fundamentally the EV market like,
what is the key market you're thinking of when you say.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That, I think capital markets in general. Right, it makes
it hard for companies to fundraise.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So you mean, if like there's a recession, then venture
capital pulls back and people don't want to do hard
tech anymore. That's a more macro kind of hard tech winter.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Right. The macro environment can can really challenge startups being
able to fundraise and then market specific. Yeah, so if
for some reason, the current administration or whatever, a region
around the world you're working in, for some reason moves
away or stops prioritizing that industry.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
EV's is an example.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, it can really tank startups, right, because we looked
at that as a company, and I try to tell
this too as many folks who will listen who are
starting to build a company as well. It's like you
need to think about how you diversify from the very beginning.
And so that's why while we work within the battery
an EV space to recycle that black mass as we
talked about, or refine that black mass, we also refine
other scrap materials like catalysts from oil and gas, and
(28:18):
there's a whole slew of industrial scrap that has nothing
to do with the EV industry that has been around
for decades and will continue.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
To be around for decades.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So if for some reason, the EV market tanks and
cobalt and nickel are no longer a desirable material, which
we don't expect to happen. You know, we have a
copper system, we have the rare system, so you know,
we try to diversify enough to be able to have
a business for whatever comes right, because we have no
idea what the next you know, eight years will look like, right,
ten years, twelve years, as we're you know, continuing to
(28:47):
scale the business in different directions. So I think macro
environment and when markets change or when startups can fail, what's.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The happy story for you? What's that you don't fail story?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think encycle becomes the leader and the go to
technology for refining for both mining companies and recycling companies.
And I think there's a real and likely possibility that
happened because of just the way that you know, we
spend a lot of time trying to figure out what
are the real pain points in this industry, and I
feel like the team that I've assembled and the technology
(29:20):
that we've built solves those problems, and we're starting to
see that in real time, and so I think, you know,
I'm hoping in three to five to ten years and
cycle is the go to refining technology that you see
for critical minerals in the space, whether it's again on
the recycling or the mining side.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Let's finish with the lightning round. What's your favorite element?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Oh, what's my favorite element?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I really like I love green and the nickel product
we produce as green, So I'll say nickel, even though
that's what I've been.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Talking about the whole time.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
What kind of green? Like?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
It is pretty green?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
It's likeugh, I wish I could show a picture, but
it's like a almost like a bright emerald, I would say.
So it's actually like I love metal chemistry in general
because you just see such beautiful colors like cobalt blue.
Cobalt can be pink, nichols green. The mix of cobalts
in nickel is like a turquoise. So it's very beautiful
chemistry that happens.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Why do PhD students make good founders?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
So I always make the joke that PhD students make
the best founders because we're used to being poor and
we're used to failing a lot, and you have to
fail and learn from failure as a founder, and that's
like a fundamental thing that you learn during your PhD,
or at least I learned during my PhD. And so
I think that's why a lot of us make good founders,
just because of those two things.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
You know what I really want to talk about spin class.
Is it true that you became a spin instructor to
learn how to be a public speaker.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I did, and also to make money because again, as
a grad student, I was poor. I did it to
push myself out of my comfort zone, right. I really
really struggled with public speaking, like I would be shaking,
I sweating everywhere.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I mean, it was awful.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And I had to get over my fear of talking
in front of people because I loved communicating science in
a way that people understood. And so I said, okay,
I didn't want to go like I got advice to
go do like a theater class, you know, improv and
I was like, ah, that's not really my jam. I
like working out, and I said, oh, like, maybe I'll
try teaching spin class and I actually didn't use a
(31:31):
microphone for many, many years because I forced myself to
speak loudly, speak clearly, and to project my voice. And
so my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time
when I was at Duke teaching spin. If anyone's been
to the Duke gym, it's three floors and the spin
was on the very bottom floor and the entrance was
like three floors up, and he always left because he
could always hear me screaming in these spin classes. He's like, oh,
(31:53):
my girlfriend is teaching. I can hear her. But I
really tried to do that and it helped, I think,
prepare me for being a CEO and a founder, because
you had to be a leader in those rooms. You
had to you know, inspire and keep people most motivated.
And those are the same skills that you need in
this position, especially when you're a small team and going
(32:16):
through you know, really difficult things. And still, I mean,
we're eight years in and there's still challenges every single day.
And so I think that's mostly what I learned from
being as man intactor is just I love the motivational
piece of it. It helped me with public speaking, and
you just you get to learn a different side of people, right,
Like you get to be there in moments where they're
(32:36):
not doing well, in moments when they're feeling great about themselves,
and I thought that was very rewarding and just helping them,
you know, it's like your me time in the day.
That's how I think about exercising, and so I loved
being part of that in their day.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Have you ever faked resistance? Yes? Of course does everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I don't know if everyone does, But when you're teaching
for an hour, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
What, that makes me feel better. I have a peloton
and I'm in reasonably good shape, but like I fall
apart when I do, like an interval ride, and when
the instructor is not falling apart, I'm like, either she's
in incredible shape, or she's faking it or both.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I guess yes, you can usually tell when people are
not faking it because it is a skill and you're
just an incredible shape, and it's shape that you quickly
fall out of, like talking at that volume and projecting
your voice while you're breathing so heavily and exercising. It's
something that you have to learn how to do, and
so you can hear in people's voices when they're really working,
because it's hard to start to not like be breathing
(33:34):
into the microphone so heavily.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, yeah, well that's actually as I'm sure you know
when they talk about like zone two training, which is
just like chill cardio. The classic sort of heuristic is
when you can carry on a conversation, right, and so
if you're doing a real interval, you shouldn't be able
to talk normally, you should not.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, at least when I was an instructor. Unfortunately, not anymore,
or at least not right now. Yeah, you some like
I tried my best because I always say like, I'm
doing the same resistance to you, and I would be
truthful in that, like if I was really doing that resistance,
I would say that to try to motivate people. But
there are some points where like I had taught five
classes a week and I was like, I can't do it.
I can't do it. I just have to be at
a lower resistance and even if I want to climb.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Did you have like a favorite cliche motivational phrase as
an instructor.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yes, you can do anything for a minute. You can
literally do anything for a minute, and I used to
say that. I used to scream that at people, like
we're going up a hill. You can do anything for
a minute. Just keep going, don't psyche yourself out.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
You can do this.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And so I say that even to myself now whenever
I'm doing something and you can do anything for a minute.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Megan O'Connor is the co founder and CEO of NTH Cycle.
Please email us at problem at pushkin dot fm. We
are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's
show was produced by Trinamnino and Gabriel Hunter Chang. It
was edited by Alexander Garrettson and engineered by Sarah Bruguheer.
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
(35:06):
another episode of What's Your Problem.
Pushkin. So the world is basically just starting this massive
shift from fossil fuels to a combination of renewable energy
and battery storage. This is good news. I hope it
happens as quickly as possible, but it is going to
(00:36):
be a massive, complicated, hard transition. One of the many
ways in which it is complicated and hard is building
and dealing with all those batteries we're going to need.
At a basic level, takes a lot of metal, a
lot of nickel, a lot of cobalt, just to make
all the batteries we're going to need, And mining and
(00:58):
refining those metals is a thing that basically doesn't happen
in the US or in Europe anymore, at least doesn't
happen at any significant scale, and for understandable reasons. Right,
this is an intense, often dirty, industrial process, and so
as you might guess, a huge share of industrial refining
of these kinds of metals now happens in China. And
(01:20):
on top of getting the metal out of the ground
and refined in the first place, there's a second complication.
Batteries wear out. What do we do with all that
potentially useful metal once a battery has finished its useful
life as a battery. So just to sum up to recap,
the world needs a huge new supply of batteries, but
especially in the US and Europe, it's not clear how
(01:44):
we can get the metal we need to make all
those batteries, and it's also not clear what we should
do with those batteries when they wear out. I'm Jacob
Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
My guest today is Megan O'Connor. She's the co founder
(02:07):
and CEO of a company called en Cycle, like the
letter in and then thh and then cycle. Megan's problem
is this, can you come up with an efficient system
that can both refine the raw metals we need for
batteries and recycle old batteries to extract that metal so
it can be used again in new batteries. Megan told
(02:29):
me that she first had the idea for the company
when she was getting her PhD in environmental engineering. Her
PhD is from Duke, but the idea actually came out
of this meeting she went to at Yale and it
was weirdly hard for her to get in the door
of that meeting.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
One of the professors there was a head of the
Green Chemistry and Green Engineering school, and he wanted to
bring industry in to help really direct the center's research
to what industry cares about.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
So that's one of the reasons why I went to
grad school, is like work on something that industry really
cares about and that has a real problem. And I
overheard him talking about this green Electronic summit in the
hallway a couple weeks before, and it was completely clear
off to students. So it was supposed to be like
a closed door meeting with these like you know, large
consumer electronic OEMs, so like Apple, Dell, Intel, folks who
(03:19):
make our cell phones and laptops and things. And I
really wanted to be in this room even though it
was closed off to students and other faculty. So what
I had to do is banged down this professor's door
for three weeks straight, and I think he finally just
gave in and staid, Okay.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
Badgering is an underrated strategy.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
I'm very determined, which I think you'll hear a lot
of entrepreneurs say. But I really wanted me in this meeting,
say like, okay, does industry actually care about any of
this that I've been researching? Right, And so he finally
let me in as a scribe, said all right, I
need somebody to take notes. Come in and take notes
for nine hours. So I sat there and over and
over and over again in this in this summit, every
single manufacturing company in there said the same two things. One,
(04:00):
they have no idea what At the time this was
ten years ago, they didn't know what to do with
their waste. Right. They said, look, we're all trying to
be leaders in transparency, in the supply chains, sustainability, right,
whatever you want to call it. They wanted to be
leaders in that space for their consumers, but they don't
know and didn't know how they were going to deal
with the growing waste management problem.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So every time you buy a new cell phone or
every time you buy a new smart watch, right, where
does the where do those things end up? And so
they said, look, e waste, right, electronics waste is already
a massive problem around the world, and that we don't
really know how to solve. Imagine when these clean energy
technologies like electric vehicles, like wind turbines, like solar panels
(04:40):
start to come offline, those are considered electronics waste. Right,
it's just gonna it's going to exacerbate.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
Orders of magnet orders of magnitude larger, right than a
cell phone electric car is just a driving battery as
a bat exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:53):
And so what are we going to do with all
this waste once we start generating it?
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Right?
Speaker 2 (04:56):
As these companies they've said, you know, we want to
try to figure out how to take responsibility for this
in our supply chains, but we don't know how to
do that. And then the second round they all said,
is we don't know what our supply chains are going
to look like. Right again, a cell phone, you is
a couple of grams of cobalts, whereas an EV uses
orders of magnitude more metal in their batteries. And so
you think about we're already having supply chain issues and
(05:18):
accessing you know, that cobalt. What does that look like
when we start to hopefully manufacture and push out all
these much larger technologies.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
Right, millions of election millions of electric.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Vehicles hopefully, And then you add the winterbines, and then
you add the solar panels, right, the same the same
things I said before, and it just the supply chains
just become bigger and bigger problem.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
And so I walked to that.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Meeting feeling a like a little angry that like, how
are we barreling down this path again generating all this
waste when we have no way of dealing with it,
but then also feeling a little inspired and said, Okay,
we have all this waste. Is there a way and
is there a technology that exists out there to be
able to take that waste and turn it back into
metals so you can have a secondary supply of these
(06:02):
materials and sort of kill tubers with one stone.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Okay, So you have this this kind of big idea,
you talk about it with your advisor, a professor named
desire Plato, right, And then, as I understand it, you
and your advisor you think of this technology that a
Harvard professor had been working on, but not in this context, right,
working on for water filtration. So you go to this professor,
(06:26):
as I understand the story, his name is Chad Vesidas,
and is it right? Like you basically ask him if
you can try and apply his technique to recycle batteries
to refine metal. And then the three of you wind
up starting the company together. Is that right?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:41):
So I approached Chad and I said, hey, you don't
know me, but you know Desi a little bit, and
can I use your technology for this application?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
He said yes.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
This was my third year of my PhD, so for
folks out there, it's typically a five to six year program,
so I was already halfway through. So it was a
little crazy of me to switch my project that far in.
But I felt very strongly that, you know, there there
was a solution that was needed here, and I went
to grad school to try and find a problem and
provide a technology solution. So I sort of dove headfirst
into it. So for the next three years, Chad, Desree
(07:11):
and I, you know, continue to work on this technology together,
and by the end of my PhD, it worked so
well that I felt if I put the right team together,
I think this technology could really change the world. They
could change the way that we refine metal. This industry
hasn't had any type of technological change in decades, right,
Like I'm talking close to one hundred years, right, This
has been the same technology we've seen and it's clearly
(07:34):
not working here in the US. It hasn't been adopted here.
So this is where technology can really have an impact
for the clean energy economy.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
I mean when you say the technology, I mean you
mean specifically refining metals. Basically, Right, you've got metals, whether
it's recycling and they're mixed up with a bunch of
other stuff, or they're coming out of the ground and
they're mixed up with a bunch of other stuff. The
fundamental thing is, how do you separate out the metal
you want, whatever, the lithium, the nickel, the cobalt. That's
the funny thing.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Exactly take from those sources, whether it's out of the
ground or out of some recycled end of life material,
and turn it back into basically something that's usable. Again,
that's what the chemical refining step does.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Why hadn't refining changed for one hundred years.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Most of the refining that's sent around the world is
in the mining industry, right, So these mining companies typically
will develop an asset, a long life asset, and an
asset meaning just the mine itself where they dig the
dirt and the metals out of the ground, and then
they typically stand the refinery up literally right next door.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
They want to eliminate as much of that transportation as
possible because these metals are in such low concentration. It's
a lot of dirt to a little bit of metal, right.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
You don't want to move one hundred pounds of dirt
a thousand miles to get one pound of exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
So the refining industry was really centered around this mining space.
And so it was only when folks really started to
look at the recycling space, and I talk battery recycling
specifically right now, it was like, Okay, you have this big,
multi billion dollar refinery where you process eighty thousand tons
(09:07):
of material per year, which is massive, and you have
a recycling industry where a again you don't have a
magic pile of eighty thousand tons of batteries right in
one place. And batteries are changing, right, There's different types
of batteries from different companies, they have different chemistries, which
just means it makes it really hard to recycle them
(09:27):
all in this one facility. And so just that model,
you know, doesn't match.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Right.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Some of those mining refineries will take a little bit
of recycled material, but again they're all overseas, right, So
then you come to that national security challenge and so.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
And so the setting aside the overseas part that the
fundamental problem is they're built to process a huge amount
of some very homogeneous and consistent input for a long time.
Like that's the economic model, that's correct, and that's the
fundamental problem.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
That's the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
So how do you do it?
Speaker 2 (10:00):
We have developed a new technology we call electro extraction,
and so it's a it's a fancy word to say
that we use the same chemicals that you see in
refining today in those massive facilities I talked about, and
those are produced with fossil energy, so they're produced fossil
energy and then trucked to those sites. What we figured
out is to overcome the barrier of having to build
(10:23):
this massive facility, we could create a smaller, modular facility
to be able to process the smaller volumes of recycle
material that we have around the Western world by producing
the same chemicals with electricity, so we can produce them
when we need them, where we need them, and only
as much as we need them. And so that gives
us the efficiencies that we needed both from a cost
(10:44):
and energy perspective to be able to really scale down
that process instead of having to do eighty thousand tons
to justify this project per year, we only need to
do a minimum of two to three thousand tons per year.
So that allows us to work with all these different
recycling companies. And whether it's one type of battery or
(11:06):
nickel catalyst material, right, we process all different times types
of sort of scrap or end of life materials. And
we've overcome some big barriers to just getting refining capacity here,
both in the US and in Europe.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
And is it right that you just turned on your
first real facility last second half of last year in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
That's right, and we just went live in September twenty
twenty four, so we're very excited. We have about eight
months of operations und our belt now.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
So tell me about what's happening in Ohio.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
In Ohio, So it's our refining system, which we call
the Oyster for shorts, and so our facility, it's a
big industrial warehouse. And basically what my system looks like,
I like to think of it as a deck of cards.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
So our electrochemical filters, as I mentioned before, think of
their like big plastic cards. So they're one meter wide,
one meter tall, and I have one hundred and forty
of those sort of stacked in parallels to think of
like a sideways deck of cards. And so inside those
cells is where I pull out the metals like the
nickel and the cobalt that we want back out for manufacturers.
(12:11):
So when I get these shredded battery materials in, if
you walked into my facility today, you'd see a giant
tank on the left hand side facility. We'd dump that
shredded battery material into that tank. We dissolve it, and
so all those dissolved metals are in there.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So the shredded battery which is called black mass. Is
that right? You haven't said black mass. I'm sort of disappointed.
I was excited for you to state black mass.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Yes, it's called black mass.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
It just it literally looks like black like flower, like
the flower that you'd bake with. It just looks like
a black version of that, which is very interesting.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
So you get truckloads of black mass? Or did you
build your facility next to that of some company that
shreds batteries and creates black mass? Is that why you're there?
Speaker 2 (12:49):
The reason we chose Fairfield was because there's a lot
of just industrial scrap that finds its way to the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
The black mass capital of the.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
There is a couple of black mass companies around there
that take the batteries and show them into black mass,
and then we also process other types of industrial scrap
like catalysts from the oil gas industry. So that area
is just rich with those types of companies.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
So you've got your deck of cards. I like the
deck of cards. It's a metaphor. They're sort of stacked
a little spaced out. The black mass goes in one side,
you dissolve it into a liquid, and then what happens.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
And then that liquid goes into our deca cards oyster system.
That's where the chemicals are being produced in those cells
to pull out the cobalt, to pull out the nickel,
and then they come out the other side as the
product that we can sell.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And are you actually buying the black mass and selling
the nickel? Are you in the nickel business?
Speaker 2 (13:44):
For this facility, we are so we called a merchant
facility where yes, we buy black mass from different partner
facilities and then we are selling the nickel product on
the other side of it. This will be the only
facility that we have that sort of again, I call
it a merchant facility for the business model, and we
did it for the first one again because it was
the first time that we've built the system at commercial scale,
so we wanted full site control.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
And then we also use it as a business development tool.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Right. Our traditional business model moving forward will be to
operate under what's called a tolling model, and so it's
really where we'll go on site with our partners and
Cycle will own and operate our system on their site,
and we'll charge them a fee per pound of save
battery or black mass that we process for them. So
think of almost like refining as a service, if you will.
(14:30):
So they'll own the feedstock, we'll charge them to process it,
and then they'll own the nickel product coming out on
the other side.
Speaker 1 (14:37):
Because you don't want to be in the nickel business.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
As a young company, we wanted to only take the
risks we had to. Yeah, so we felt like, Okay,
we can handle the operational risk. It's our technology. We'll
do what we're good at, and then we'll let these
companies do it they're good at because they've been in
Remember these companies have been in the commodity business for decades.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Right or longer.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I mean, they're very skilled in like the logistics and
the collection and no.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Commodity business is crazy. Why would you want to do that?
If you have some technology, you believe it and let
other people solve that problem.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Yeah, we want to be the technologists. We want to
be the technology provider. So that's our business model moving forward.
And so what we use OHIO for is really like
a tool to show them what the technology looks like.
We can process their material, you know, at lower volumes there,
to show them what we can do with it. It
de risks it on both sides as we're going into
this more partnership model with them in the future.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
So we've been talking about nickel. I heard you talk
in earlier interviews about nickel in particular, or this nickel
product more specifically in particular as being acutely affected by
kind of legal and regulatory changes both in the US
and in Europe. In a way that is good for you, right,
in a way that like those may be about to
(15:46):
go away.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
They are are they maybe us right, we don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yet, and they seem likely to be about.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
Likely to go away. That's right.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But I would say this administration also prioritizes critical minerals
just for other reasons, right, so more on the national
security side, and to really onchour our supply chain. So
there is equally as much demand for domestically produced materials,
just for a different reason. And so we still feel
like a ton of tailwinds with the executive orders, and
we'll see how that translates into policy in the next
(16:15):
couple of years.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
So the end of the ev mandate is bad for you,
but high tariffs are good for you.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
I don't know if I put it like that, but
we are definitely taking advantage of the desire to have
on shoing of these critical and il supply chains and
being one of the companies in the space that's operational.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
So I think it's a good signal.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
For us to scale quickly to be able to provide
both the military and again the folks who are still
pushing forward through the clean energy economy and the technologies
they're building, Right, they both need supply of these materials
they are used for.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Both pivoting from being an energy transition company to being
in an American energy dominance company. That's right, we same company, right,
different wrapper.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
It's very true both we need both of those things.
And then you know on the on the European side,
where they haven't had much change in terms of their
their regulatory environment as I like to think about it,
but they care about this again for a different reason.
They have something that's called the battery passport where they're
going to have to reduce the carbon footprint of their
batteries that are being produced. And it starts with the metals, right,
(17:14):
And so currently where you can source the vast majority
of the nickel around the world uses a technology that
is very carbon intensive.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
It's called HPAL.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
HPAL is the acronym if folks care to look that up.
But it's just a very very carbon intensive way to
produce this nickel out of the nickel mining that happens
in Indonesia, and it's so carbon intensive that it doesn't
meet those requirements. So Europe is forced to try and
find another source of these materials. And on top of that,
they have very strict recycling rates that they'll have to
(17:47):
hit over the next several years. It sort of forces
industry within the EU to develop recycling and refining technologies.
And then on top of that, if you do recycle
the batteries, there and you produce this black mass. They've
also now classified this black mass as a very specific
type of hazardous waste, which means that it's very difficult
(18:08):
and nearly impotus to ship the black mass between country
borders within the EU.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Uh huh. Arguably a self defeating regulation, but perhaps good
for your business, great for.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
End cycle because we are the only one of the
only modular technologies that can go into each country and
help them turn that black mass into a product that
they can easily move across borders. Right, So again, this
distributed modular refining approach is quickly becoming the only way
that they'll be able to solve these challenges within the EU.
And then I think similar to here in the US, right,
(18:41):
we have not been able to build sort of traditional
technology here.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
So when are you going to turn on the first
oyster in Europe?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
So the goal would be twenty twenty six. So we're
working with some partners now to try and solidify what
those projects will look like, but starting construction in twenty
twenty six is the goal.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
So we've been talking about nickel. Is that going to
be your main output for a while? I mean, can
it be anything that's can it be lithium, Can it
be cobalt? Like, how does that work?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yes, the main product out of the system is like
a mixture of cobalt and nickel. Actually it's called nickel MHP,
which is a very industry specific term. It's just a
nickel product. We also produce a lithium product out of
the black mass as well. And then in development, we
have a new system for copper, so a lot of
our partners have copper scrap. We're also talking some copper
mining companies about some of the issues they're having to
(19:29):
deploy the technology there.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
And then we also have one for rare earths.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
So the rare earths are the metals in think like
the magnets that are in your motors, in the wind
turbines that you might see hopefully in your backyard. So
it's two other systems to try and produce as much
of these critical minerals as we possibly can, because they
all face the same challenges, right, they're all refined. The
vestnory them are fined overseas, and it causes again a
(19:53):
big national security issue and just limits us into how
quickly we can build these technologies here in the US
and Europe.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
We'll be back in just a minute. What's the rate
limiting step for you and expanding?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
I'd say the rate limiting step for us now is
a combination of funding and just the team.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Right.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
So, I think we're ready to go, and we will
be fundraising in the next several months to go out
and do these projects, and then with that funding, we'll
build the team that we need to go execute.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
I mean, in terms of funding, if you sign a
contract with some company to do refining as a service
for them, can you borrow against that contract to build
the thing that they promised to pay you to use? Yeah,
Like a factory is a classic thing that it's collateral.
You could borrow money in it. Or is it not
collateral because nobody's ever built one before and the bank
doesn't try it.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
We're somewhere in the middle. So we're in this for
folks out there who may be building or have heard
of other startups going through this phase, it's called like
the scale gap, the missing middle.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Huh, you got one and you want ten? And how
do you get there?
Speaker 3 (21:00):
And you get the money?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Because we still have some technical risk right of course,
because it's a second of a kind and a first
of its kind.
Speaker 3 (21:06):
Ohio is our first a kind.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
So there's a whole bunch of folks who are dealing
with the same thing and trying to find like what
does that financing look like for this type of risk profile.
But there is money out there, and I do think
that again given the space that we're in and where
we are with with Ohio and the next projects, and
like you said, the contracts will be everything to show
that there is market poll for our technology.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
What are you trying to figure out now? What's sort
of the frontier for you?
Speaker 2 (21:31):
So what we're trying to figure out now is how
do we translate this technology that we are expanding within
this scrap recycling space with into the mining space. I
think the whole goal of in Cycle was to try
and you know, create the most robust supply chains that
we possibly can for these critical minerals and you know,
build a clean energy economy on the cleanest source of materials.
(21:54):
You know what really killed me at the end of
the day when I was starting about thinking the company
is like, gosh, we are building this like quote unquote
clean energy economy on a dirty source of material So
we continue to make the same problems in industry that
we have in the past, and so that was really
like the core of why I wanted to start and
cycle and the application of scrap recycling came from that.
And then the goal and the dream is really to
(22:15):
start to do this in the mining space, because that's
where you can have like massive, massive impact. I mean,
there's just orders of magnitude more material process per year
from mine than there is from recycling. And the goal
is to eventually recycle enough material to have it all
in circulation so that you can just solely rely on recycling.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Even if you are recycling everything, assuming people are switching
to evs over time, you'll still need a lot of
new lithium and nickel and cobalt out of the ground.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
For in the next several decades. Absolutely, So that's where
I think mining gets this bad rap. But we have
to continue to mine materials to push forward in the
clean energy economy. We like you said, there is not
enough recycling material out there to be even if you
recycled one hundred percent of it, it does not get
you enough cobalt and nickel or lithium or whatever material
you're looking at to be able to meet demand. But
(23:10):
what we're really targeting is how do you turn on
these existing or bodies that haven't been developed yet. Right,
So there is cobalt, there is nickel, there is copper.
Here in the US, there's not a ton of mining
that happens because the refining piece is so environmentally damaging, right,
and people don't want in their backyards.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
And I wouldn't either.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I understand the sort of the pain with that. But
if you can develop a technology that overcomes and doesn't
have all the waste that's associated with the traditional refining
and can have the same unit economics and justify opening
up these smaller minds because they are much much smaller
than what you'd see overseas. Right, So again the technology
is a mismatch for the source of materials. That's really
(23:50):
where this innovation can have a major, major impact of
like getting more of these minds online and getting the
US to have a mining industry. Again, it's really the
technology that I think will unlock that. And that's sort
of the new frontier front cycle is is I have
a team of folks sort of looking at what are
the right applications in mining for US, and you know,
(24:11):
does the technology need to look any different. So the
chemistry basis, the cells will work exactly the same, it's
just the system will likely have to look different.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
It's refining either way. It's refining either way, refining now,
but instead of the input being black masks shredded up batteries,
it'll be a lot of dirt with a little.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Bit exactly exactly right.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
So, there are a few other battery recycling companies in
the US, including one started by the guy who actually
started Tesla's aby, Redwood Materials. So tell me sort of
how how you fit in that broader context of the industry.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
Yes, there's many companies. Redwood is one of the largest
companies who works in the battery cycling space, especially here
in the US, and their strategy is battery to battery, right.
They are solely battery recyclers who want to produce some
type of end battery product. Forether it's a chemical that
goes into batteries, or the cathode that goes to the batteries,
or the battery itself. So what they're trying to do
(25:11):
is really build out that entire supply chain from collecting
the batteries shredding those batteries into black mass, they want
to refine those materials, and then they want to be
a manufacturer, So they.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Want to be a company that buys old batteries and sells.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Exactly And I think that's very needed in the space.
Right there's a lot of steps in the supply chain
that need to be built.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Here.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
What end cycle does is just the refining piece, and
so these companies are using very traditional technology from the
mining space, and so what we're providing and we partner
with a lot of these companies, is just a new
technology that is cheaper, more efficient to be able to
process these batteries.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Maybe that's like the wrong industry for me to be
thinking about. Is the right industry for me to be
thinking about? Refining? Is the right question? Who else is
trying to new and better ways.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Of There's not a ton of companies in the space.
There are a few of us who are solely focused
on the refining piece and who are trying to take
this modular approach. I would say we're one of the
only ones that takes more than batteries. There's a lot
of refining companies focused on black mass in particular. But
again we said, like, look, even if you're recycled one
hundred percent of batteries. You're not going to get enough nickel,
(26:19):
as we talked about earlier, or coboth or lithium. And
so from the beginning, you know, we tried to build
a technology that could be very flexible in the types
of materials we can put in on the front end.
And so I would say we're one of the only
companies in the space that diversified. But yeah, one or
two others in the US and Europe that are sort
(26:41):
of in the same exact space.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
That we are. Why might you fail if you don't
make it? Why wouldn't you make it?
Speaker 2 (26:47):
One of the reasons we couldn't make it is if
technology adoption right, if we start to have massive shifts
in the regulatory environment, which some folks in the climate
technology space, which some people would put us in, are
showing to feel that now the market really slows and
startups need to move at a very fast pace and
make a lot of progress because we have limited cash right,
(27:08):
because we're fun raising to survive until we build systems
that can generate consistent cash flow. And so when markets
slow down is when startups die.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
And in your case, is that fundamentally the EV market like,
what is the key market you're thinking of when you say.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
That, I think capital markets in general. Right, it makes
it hard for companies to fundraise.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So you mean, if like there's a recession, then venture
capital pulls back and people don't want to do hard
tech anymore. That's a more macro kind of hard tech winter.
Speaker 2 (27:37):
Right. The macro environment can can really challenge startups being
able to fundraise and then market specific. Yeah, so if
for some reason, the current administration or whatever, a region
around the world you're working in, for some reason moves
away or stops prioritizing that industry.
Speaker 3 (27:54):
EV's is an example.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Yes, it can really tank startups, right, because we looked
at that as a company, and I try to tell
this too as many folks who will listen who are
starting to build a company as well. It's like you
need to think about how you diversify from the very beginning.
And so that's why while we work within the battery
an EV space to recycle that black mass as we
talked about, or refine that black mass, we also refine
other scrap materials like catalysts from oil and gas, and
(28:18):
there's a whole slew of industrial scrap that has nothing
to do with the EV industry that has been around
for decades and will continue.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
To be around for decades.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
So if for some reason, the EV market tanks and
cobalt and nickel are no longer a desirable material, which
we don't expect to happen. You know, we have a
copper system, we have the rare system, so you know,
we try to diversify enough to be able to have
a business for whatever comes right, because we have no
idea what the next you know, eight years will look like, right,
ten years, twelve years, as we're you know, continuing to
(28:47):
scale the business in different directions. So I think macro
environment and when markets change or when startups can fail, what's.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
The happy story for you? What's that you don't fail story?
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think encycle becomes the leader and the go to
technology for refining for both mining companies and recycling companies.
And I think there's a real and likely possibility that
happened because of just the way that you know, we
spend a lot of time trying to figure out what
are the real pain points in this industry, and I
feel like the team that I've assembled and the technology
(29:20):
that we've built solves those problems, and we're starting to
see that in real time, and so I think, you know,
I'm hoping in three to five to ten years and
cycle is the go to refining technology that you see
for critical minerals in the space, whether it's again on
the recycling or the mining side.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Of the world.
Speaker 4 (29:38):
We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 1 (29:49):
Let's finish with the lightning round. What's your favorite element?
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Oh, what's my favorite element?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
I really like I love green and the nickel product
we produce as green, So I'll say nickel, even though
that's what I've been.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
Talking about the whole time.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
What kind of green? Like?
Speaker 3 (30:03):
It is pretty green?
Speaker 2 (30:04):
It's likeugh, I wish I could show a picture, but
it's like a almost like a bright emerald, I would say.
So it's actually like I love metal chemistry in general
because you just see such beautiful colors like cobalt blue.
Cobalt can be pink, nichols green. The mix of cobalts
in nickel is like a turquoise. So it's very beautiful
chemistry that happens.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
Why do PhD students make good founders?
Speaker 2 (30:27):
So I always make the joke that PhD students make
the best founders because we're used to being poor and
we're used to failing a lot, and you have to
fail and learn from failure as a founder, and that's
like a fundamental thing that you learn during your PhD,
or at least I learned during my PhD. And so
I think that's why a lot of us make good founders,
just because of those two things.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
You know what I really want to talk about spin class.
Is it true that you became a spin instructor to
learn how to be a public speaker.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
I did, and also to make money because again, as
a grad student, I was poor. I did it to
push myself out of my comfort zone, right. I really
really struggled with public speaking, like I would be shaking,
I sweating everywhere.
Speaker 3 (31:09):
I mean, it was awful.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
And I had to get over my fear of talking
in front of people because I loved communicating science in
a way that people understood. And so I said, okay,
I didn't want to go like I got advice to
go do like a theater class, you know, improv and
I was like, ah, that's not really my jam. I
like working out, and I said, oh, like, maybe I'll
try teaching spin class and I actually didn't use a
(31:31):
microphone for many, many years because I forced myself to
speak loudly, speak clearly, and to project my voice. And
so my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time
when I was at Duke teaching spin. If anyone's been
to the Duke gym, it's three floors and the spin
was on the very bottom floor and the entrance was
like three floors up, and he always left because he
could always hear me screaming in these spin classes. He's like, oh,
(31:53):
my girlfriend is teaching. I can hear her. But I
really tried to do that and it helped, I think,
prepare me for being a CEO and a founder, because
you had to be a leader in those rooms. You
had to you know, inspire and keep people most motivated.
And those are the same skills that you need in
this position, especially when you're a small team and going
(32:16):
through you know, really difficult things. And still, I mean,
we're eight years in and there's still challenges every single day.
And so I think that's mostly what I learned from
being as man intactor is just I love the motivational
piece of it. It helped me with public speaking, and
you just you get to learn a different side of people, right,
Like you get to be there in moments where they're
(32:36):
not doing well, in moments when they're feeling great about themselves,
and I thought that was very rewarding and just helping them,
you know, it's like your me time in the day.
That's how I think about exercising, and so I loved
being part of that in their day.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
Have you ever faked resistance? Yes? Of course does everybody.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
I don't know if everyone does, But when you're teaching
for an hour, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:54):
What, that makes me feel better. I have a peloton
and I'm in reasonably good shape, but like I fall
apart when I do, like an interval ride, and when
the instructor is not falling apart, I'm like, either she's
in incredible shape, or she's faking it or both.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
I guess yes, you can usually tell when people are
not faking it because it is a skill and you're
just an incredible shape, and it's shape that you quickly
fall out of, like talking at that volume and projecting
your voice while you're breathing so heavily and exercising. It's
something that you have to learn how to do, and
so you can hear in people's voices when they're really working,
because it's hard to start to not like be breathing
(33:34):
into the microphone so heavily.
Speaker 1 (33:36):
Yeah, yeah, well that's actually as I'm sure you know
when they talk about like zone two training, which is
just like chill cardio. The classic sort of heuristic is
when you can carry on a conversation, right, and so
if you're doing a real interval, you shouldn't be able
to talk normally, you should not.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
Yeah, at least when I was an instructor. Unfortunately, not anymore,
or at least not right now. Yeah, you some like
I tried my best because I always say like, I'm
doing the same resistance to you, and I would be
truthful in that, like if I was really doing that resistance,
I would say that to try to motivate people. But
there are some points where like I had taught five
classes a week and I was like, I can't do it.
I can't do it. I just have to be at
a lower resistance and even if I want to climb.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Did you have like a favorite cliche motivational phrase as
an instructor.
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Yes, you can do anything for a minute. You can
literally do anything for a minute, and I used to
say that. I used to scream that at people, like
we're going up a hill. You can do anything for
a minute. Just keep going, don't psyche yourself out.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
You can do this.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
And so I say that even to myself now whenever
I'm doing something and you can do anything for a minute.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Megan O'Connor is the co founder and CEO of NTH Cycle.
Please email us at problem at pushkin dot fm. We
are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's
show was produced by Trinamnino and Gabriel Hunter Chang. It
was edited by Alexander Garrettson and engineered by Sarah Bruguheer.
I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
(35:06):
another episode of What's Your Problem.
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