The U.S. Department of Energy will distribute up to $500 million across seven projects to expand domestic critical mineral processing and recycling capacity, with lithium-ion battery recyclers Princeton NuEnergy and Nth Cycle among the recipients, the department announced last week.

Princeton NuEnergy, a lithium-ion battery recycling and cathode manufacturing company, will receive up to $50 million. Nth Cycle, a critical minerals refining company, drew the largest disclosed battery recycling award at up to $100 million. Both companies are now in award negotiations with DOE.

The funding lands days before a one-year federal ban on black mass exports takes effect August 27. Black mass — the shredded output of spent lithium-ion batteries containing lithium, cobalt, nickel and other critical minerals — must now stay in the United States, and refiners are positioning to absorb it.

What will Princeton NuEnergy build?

The up-to-$50 million grant will support construction of a $110 million demonstration facility in Commerce, Georgia, that Princeton NuEnergy describes as a closed-loop, "cathode-to-cathode" operation. The plant will process lithium-ion battery manufacturing scrap to recover and rejuvenate nickel from cathode material.

The company says the facility will recover cathode active material at roughly 45% lower cost than manufacturing new batteries with virgin material. It expects to build alongside battery manufacturing operations.

"Direct recycling allows us to retain more of the value already engineered into cathode materials rather than breaking them down and rebuilding them from their constituent elements," said Stephen Snyder, chief strategy officer, in a statement.

Princeton NuEnergy already operates an advanced black mass recycling production facility in South Carolina, which came online last year with support in part from a $12 million DOE grant awarded in 2022.

What does Nth Cycle's $100M buy?

Nth Cycle plans a commercial-scale refinery processing up to 24,000 metric tons of black mass per year, drawn from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and manufacturing scrap. The company says the facility will produce high-purity metals and battery-grade materials for end uses including AI data centers, grid storage, transportation and military applications.

The company refines material through what it calls an "electroextraction platform." It targets an opening by 2029 somewhere in the Southeast, though it has not announced an exact site. Its existing facility in Fairfield, Ohio, began operations in 2024.

Nth Cycle frames the project as the answer to a refining bottleneck the export ban is about to sharpen.

"The Trump Administration has recognized that keeping recoverable critical minerals in the United States is a matter of national security. But without refining capacity, those resources can't be used for new manufacturing," said Megan O'Connor, Nth Cycle's co-founder and CEO, in a statement. "Being selected by the DOE to fill this gap validates the role we play to onshore one of the most consequential supply chains of our time."

Where does this round fit in DOE's program?

The awards come through DOE's Battery Manufacturing and Recycling Grants Program, funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed during the Biden Administration. The first funding round was announced in 2022; this is the third.

The program's track record is uneven. DOE canceled more than $700 million in program grant awards last year, saying certain projects had missed milestones or would not advance the nation's energy needs. Among the cancellations was American Battery Technology Co.'s $57 million grant for a Nevada lithium refinery, awarded in 2022. In June, DOE reinstated that five-year grant.

The new round targets infrastructure specifically: demonstration projects, retrofits and construction of commercial-scale facilities. Other recipients include Arcanum Ventures, Elevated Materials and Coreshell Technologies Incorporated, Jervois and Lilac Solutions.

Built capacity versus announcements

The distinction matters in this round. Nth Cycle's 24,000-tonne refinery and Princeton NuEnergy's Georgia facility are announced projects pending construction. Nth Cycle's Ohio plant and Princeton NuEnergy's South Carolina black mass facility are operating assets.

For the battery scrap and black mass stream, the policy signal is now two-directional: the export ban cuts off overseas outlets from August 27, while the DOE money finances domestic refining to catch the material. Whether the 2029 timelines hold — and whether DOE completes the award negotiations — determines how much black mass capacity actually exists when the ban forces the stream onshore.