AMERICAN BATTERY TECHNOLOGY COMPANY American Battery Technology Company appoints new Director of Research and Development, Dr. York Smith. Bringing over 15 years of research and development experience, Smith has an extensive background in applied sciences in chemical engineering and sustainable technology process development, with specific focuses on extractive metallurgy, electrochemistry, and non-ferrous metal recycling. He has worked as an assistant professor at the University of Utah's Materials Science and Engineering Department for the past six years, where he recently was awarded the distinguished honor of serving as part of the Henry Krumb Lecturer Series issued by the Society of Mining, Metallurgy, & Exploration for his work focused on "Lithium: Resources, Recovery, and Recycling.” While at the University of Utah, he led a team of interdisciplinary researchers developing innovative and sustainable technologies for lithium extraction from primary and secondary resources including recycling technologies.
Recently, a team he led comprised of members from the University of Utah, Cornell University, and UC Riverside was selected as Phase I finalists in the national competition “American-Made Challenges: Geothermal Lithium Extraction Prize,” hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy. In this new role, Smith will oversee the ABTC team of scientists at the company's Research Development Center currently located at the University of Nevada Reno's Nevada Center for Applied Research (NCAR) and within the cleantech incubatorGreentown Labs. Diligently focused on developing and evolving in-house, battery metals extraction technologies, the ABTC technology team supports continued work on their US Advanced Battery Consortium and Department of Energyfunded collaboration with strategic partners BASF and C4V to demonstrate that battery grade metals nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium hydroxide can be manufactured from recycled materials at lower cost, lower environmental impact, and with higher domestic U.S. sourced content than conventional virgin sourced metals.
