US Department of Energy selects seven critical mineral and battery projects for $500 million
The US Department of Energy selected seven critical minerals and battery projects for $500 million on 20 August 2026, including three recycling plants.
Photo by Ramesh Kambattan on Pexels
The US Department of Energy announced $500 million for seven selected projects to expand critical mineral and material processing, battery manufacturing and recycling capacity in the United States on 20 August 2026. Three of the seven are battery recycling or reprocessing plants, which places a large share of this round of critical minerals funding in the circular economy rather than in new mining.
The awards form the third round of DOE’s Battery Materials Processing and Battery Manufacturing and Recycling grant programmes, both funded under sections 40207(b) and 40207(c) of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act at $3 billion each. They are administered by the Manufacturing Deployment Office within DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation. DOE says the first two rounds awarded $1.82 billion across 14 projects.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated: “For too long, America has depended on foreign actors for critical materials essential to modern life that underpin our economy, energy security, and national security.” Assistant Secretary of Energy Audrey Robertson, who leads the Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, said: “DOE is taking decisive action to secure the critical supply chains necessary to power our nation.”
Where the critical minerals funding goes
DOE’s own press release names neither the seven recipients nor the individual amounts; those come from company announcements and from trade reporting citing DOE documents. Three projects were selected at $100 million and four at $50 million.
| Recipient | Project | Location | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lilac Solutions | Commercial direct lithium extraction and refining, phase one at 5,000 tonnes a year of lithium carbonate, first production targeted 2028 | Great Salt Lake, Utah | $100 million |
| Formation Holdings US Inc. (Jervois) | Commercial cobalt refinery producing battery-grade cobalt sulphate | Salmon, Idaho | $100 million |
| Nth Cycle | Black mass refining from end-of-life batteries and manufacturing scrap | Southeastern United States | Up to $100 million |
| Princeton NuEnergy | Closed-loop cathode-to-cathode rejuvenation demonstration plant | Commerce, Georgia | $50 million |
| Arcanum Ventures | Commercial-scale battery-grade ethylene carbonate production | US Gulf Coast, site to be confirmed | $50 million |
| Coreshell Technologies | Silicon-anode battery materials | San Leandro, California | $50 million |
| Elevated Materials | Ultra-thin lithium-metal films and pre-lithiated materials | Not stated | $50 million |
Sources: Mining Technology, 24 August 2026, citing DOE; EnergyTech, 21 August 2026; company releases.
Nth Cycle’s own announcement is careful about what a selection means: the company was selected to enter award negotiations for up to $100 million, and its release notes that “the selection is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award, and final funding amounts may differ”. Arcanum Ventures uses similar wording, describing its $50 million as subject to award negotiations.
The three recycling and materials projects in detail
Nth Cycle’s project, named SHIELD, for Strategic Hub for Industrial Electroextraction and Logistics Defense, is designed to process up to 24,000 tonnes a year of domestic black mass, the shredded mixture of metals recovered from spent lithium-ion cells and factory scrap. Outputs are nickel mixed hydroxide precipitate and battery-grade lithium carbonate. The company says the plant could be operational as early as 2029, with 800 to 1,000 construction jobs and 54 permanent roles. Nth Cycle, founded in 2017 by Megan O’Connor, Chad Vecitis and Desirée Plata, runs an existing electroextraction plant in Fairfield, Ohio, which came online in 2024; the company reports 3,400 production hours there at 99 per cent recovery and 98 per cent purity for its nickel product. It also holds a ten-year offtake agreement with Trafigura covering 2,000 tonnes of nickel in mixed hydroxide precipitate and 1,500 tonnes of battery-grade lithium carbonate.
Princeton NuEnergy, a 2019 spinout from Princeton University founded by Chao Yan, Bruce Koel and Xiaofang Yang, will build a cathode-to-cathode facility in Commerce, Georgia, processing 3,000 tonnes a year. The company puts the total project cost at $110 million, with $60 million of its own cost share alongside the $50 million grant, and projects 70 full-time manufacturing jobs and about 100 construction jobs. Its process uses low-temperature plasma-assisted separation to recover and rejuvenate nickel-containing cathode material rather than dissolving it back to constituent metals. DOE’s summary of the project describes the feedstock as battery manufacturing scrap.
Arcanum Ventures will build a commercial plant converting ethylene oxide and carbon dioxide into high-purity ethylene carbonate, a solvent used in lithium-ion electrolytes, co-located with existing chemical infrastructure. The company operates three manufacturing assets across a site of more than 300 acres at Baytown, Texas. Pat Geer, the company’s chief commercial officer and project lead, said: “Ethylene carbonate is a foundational material for conventional lithium-ion battery electrolytes, yet the U.S. currently relies almost entirely on imported supply.”
The import position the awards are aimed at
The Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, published by the US Geological Survey in February 2026, sets out the gap these projects target. The United States produced no natural graphite in 2025 and has had a net import reliance of 100 per cent every year since 2021. Domestic flake graphite production last occurred in Texas in 1979, and amorphous graphite in Montana in 1989.
| Commodity | US net import reliance | Leading import sources, 2021-24 | Other verified figures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Natural graphite | 100 per cent, 2021 to 2025 | China 46 per cent, Canada 13 per cent, Mozambique 13 per cent, Mexico 12 per cent | 2025 imports about 79,000 tonnes; apparent consumption 71,000 tonnes valued at $128 million; China produced an estimated 82 per cent of world output in 2025 |
| Lithium | More than 25 per cent in 2021-22, more than 50 per cent in 2023, 2024 and 2025 | Chile 54 per cent, Argentina 43 per cent | Batteries account for 88 per cent of global end use; 2025 US average battery-grade lithium carbonate price $9,000 a tonne, down 31 per cent on 2024; one commercial-scale US producer |
Source: US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026, graphite and lithium chapters.
USGS also notes that “information on the quantity and value of recycled graphite was not available”, an absence that illustrates how thin the recycling data still is. Imports of graphite battery anode material reached 43,400 tonnes in the first eight months of 2025, against 28,100 tonnes in the same period of 2024, with China supplying 55 per cent.
Policy framing and one prior commitment
DOE places the awards under Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy”, signed on 20 January 2025 and published in the Federal Register on 29 January 2025. Robertson told Reuters, as reported by Mining Technology, that DOE received hundreds of applications and selected the most promising, and that the funding was not linked to the recent restrictions on black mass exports, but that the country needs to build the capacity to recycle and process batteries and black mass domestically.
The round delivers on part of an announcement DOE made on 13 August 2025, when it set out its intent to issue funding notices totalling nearly $1 billion. Of that $975 million, $500 million was earmarked for battery materials processing, manufacturing and recycling, with the remainder split between a critical minerals and materials accelerator at up to $50 million, mines and metals capacity expansion at about $250 million, a rare earth elements demonstration facility at up to $135 million, and $40 million through ARPA-E’s RECOVER programme. The battery notice required recipients to cover at least 50 per cent of project costs.
The $500 million figure should not be confused with the separate $500 million in state microgrid grants under the STRONG GRID Act microgrid bill that Winss Solutions reported in July 2026.
Background
Battery recycling has moved from pilot to plant scale over the past two years, and this round funds three different points in that chain: black mass refining back to metal salts, cathode rejuvenation that skips the return to raw elements, and domestic production of an electrolyte solvent the United States currently imports. Winss Solutions has covered adjacent developments including Moment Energy’s second-life EV battery factory, the EU Digital Product Passport registry that will carry battery data from February 2027, and chemistries that sidestep constrained minerals entirely, such as Rept Battero’s 320 Ah sodium-ion storage cell and iron-air batteries for long-duration storage.
The Lilac Solutions award also touches lithium recovery from brine, a route Winss Solutions examined in reporting on solar desalination that produces fresh water with no brine waste. None of the seven selections is a signed contract yet: each moves next into award negotiation with DOE, and the department has stated that final amounts may differ from the figures announced.
Sources: US Department of Energy; Mining Technology; EnergyTech; ESG Today; Nth Cycle; Princeton NuEnergy via PR Newswire; Arcanum Ventures via EIN Presswire; US Department of Energy, August 2025; US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; US Geological Survey, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026; Federal Register
Featured image: photo by Ramesh Kambattan on Pexels (free Pexels license).
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I specialize in sustainability education, curriculum co-creation, and early-stage project strategy. At WINSS, I craft articles on sustainability, transformative AI, and related topics. When I’m not writing, you’ll find me chasing the perfect sushi roll, exploring cities around the globe, or unwinding with my dog Puffy — the world’s most loyal sidekick.
