The first steel columns of Jaewon Industrial’s chemical recycling plant were erected Wednesday for the largest of seven structures that will make up the plant. The company is building in Kokomo to serve the EV battery manufacturing industry and the StarPlus Energy plants. Photo provided
An electric vehicle battery supplier to StarPlus Energy that is just starting its Kokomo operations is seeking a rezoning of nearly six acres of land it intends to use for possible future expansion.
The Kokomo City Council last week approved on first reading a rezoning request from Jaewon Industrial for a 5.75-acre parcel adjacent to the south of its newly-constructed Kokomo operations at 1679 Sparks Road.
The chemical recycling company is seeking to rezone the property from a planned development to high intensity industrial/heavy manufacturing. A second and final reading is scheduled for the City Council’s next meeting at 6 p.m. Monday.
Paul Wyman, owner of The Wyman Group and representing Jaewon at last week’s meeting, said the South Korean company doesn’t have any plans for use of the property in the “near future” but that the company has an opportunity to expand “down the road” to serve both StarPlus Energy’s second EV battery plant in Kokomo and General Motor’s New Carlisle EV battery plant. Both are expected to begin production in 2027.
“Jaewon obviously has an opportunity to provide support to the battery plants we have in the state of Indiana, including the one we have now and potentially another,” Wyman said. “Certainly, we would love to have the opportunity for them to expand in our community as opposed to having to look elsewhere to continue to support battery plant operations.”
In April 2023, Jaewon announced it was building a plant in Kokomo, bringing with it a $102 million investment and 100 “high wage” jobs. At the plant, the company creates a “conductive slurry” known as TDS-L and recycles n-methylpyrrolidone through vacuum distillation. NMP is used as a solvent in the electrode coating of battery manufacturing.
Specifically, according to company documents submitted to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, Jaewon receives “cathode slurry” from StarPlus Energy via an above ground pipeline and other customers via portable containers or tanker trucks then feeds it into its vacuum distillation process to produce a final product that is greater than 99% NMP.
The cathode slurry it receives, according to the company, is a mixture of NMP and metals, including cobalt, lithium, nickel and aluminum.
The purified NMP is then returned to StarPlus Energy via the pipeline and other customers via tote or tanker truck. Jaewon also sends TDS-L to StarPlus Energy and others in accordance with customer specifications.
Late last year, the company received approval from IDEM to classify the cathode slurry it receives as not a solid waste.
It argued, in a report submitted to IDEM by hired consulting firm KERAMIDA, the cathode slurry is not a hazardous waste, citing that none of its ingredients are “ignitable, corrosive, reactive or toxic, and will be mostly reused and not thrown away.”
IDEM agreed, granting the solid waste exception last October.
The definition of what is and isn’t a solid waste was revised in 2022 by the Indiana General Assembly. The new definition, according to an IDEM fact sheet, states discarded material is not solid waste if it is nonhazardous and “is used by a manufacturer as an ingredient in or a component of a product, or as a commodity in a process that results in a product.”
Jaewon intends to store the cathode slurry in totes at its manufacturing facility and a third-party warehouse for no longer than six months before recycling. It will be able to reuse greater than 90% of the cathode slurry, discarding the rest, according to its request to IDEM.
The company will have to keep records demonstrating the material is being reused as a “valuable commodity” to maintain its designation of not being a solid waste.
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