The Indiana Department of Environmental Management is holding a public hearing Thursday regarding a request from Jaewon Industries to modify its air emissions permit.

The public hearing is 6 p.m. Thursday at Hingst Hall on the campus of Ivy Tech Community College Kokomo, 1901 E. Morgan St. The hearing will end at 9 p.m. or when all comments have been heard, whichever comes first.

Jaewon, an electric vehicle battery supplier located at 1679 E. Sparks Road, is asking IDEM, according to its request, to be able to build two additional TDS-L conductive slurry production trains and an additional diesel fire pump.

The additions will increase air emissions at the plant, hence the need to receive approval from IDEM.

At the public hearing, IDEM staff will describe Jaewon’s air permit and answer questions from citizens in an informal setting. There will be no formal presentation, according to IDEM’s public meeting notice, but there will be opportunities to submit written comments, ask questions and discuss air pollution concerns.

Following the end of the public comment period, IDEM will issue a “Notice of Decision” stating whether the permit has been issued or denied.

The public hearing comes after members of the public mounted a campaign to persuade IDEM to hold a public hearing.

Ann and David Ihms, of Criterion Water Labs, were one of the largest proponents for a public hearing.

“When we saw the very large distillation tower on site we knew that it is essential to capture vapors not just for worker and close proximity housing developments but also the rest of our community,” the two wrote in a letter to the editor sent to local media outlets. “We sure would appreciate knowing more about what IDEM is requiring and how air quality will be monitored.”

Jaewon creates a “conductive slurry” known as TDS-L and also recycles n-methylpyrrolidone, a solvent widely used in the production of lithium-ion batteries, through vacuum distillation.

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 which then feed 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 plans on selling and sending TDS-L to StarPlus Energy and others in accordance with customer specifications.

The additions, the company states, will allow it to reach its currently permitted production of l0,000 cubic meters, or 2,641,720.5 gallons, per year of TDS-L conductive slurry.
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