EDEN PRAIRIE, Minnesota — Garages are places where things get fixed and where ideas are born.
"Even since I was a little kid, doing little woodwork projects back here. Now, trying to research a chemical process," said Gabriel Riegert from this dad's garage in Eden Prairie.
Riegert, a junior at the University of St. Thomas studying marketing and Spanish, used to be a sales representative who would sell equipment that used lithium-ion batteries.
"When a customer would come in, they'd say their lithium-ion product didn't work. We would take it in, fix it for them right away. But the thing I noticed is that those lithium-ion batteries, where do they go?" asked Riegert.
While they would typically sit on a shelf and then get dropped off at a big box store, Riegert was curious to find out where they went after that.
"We figured out that most of them end up in landfills, rivers, and they damage the environment," Riegert said. "So I brought it upon myself, 'Okay, Gabe, let's figure out the best way to recycle these batteries.' Where can they go so that we can be more sustainable and the consumer can know where the batteries are really going?"
Then Georges Macheta — an international student from Syria studying computer science and entrepreneurship at UST — became Riegert's roommate.
"We competed in a competition with different businesses and then I ended up being like, 'I kind of want to join your team. It sounds like a cool idea. I think I can add something to it.' And that's where we ended up being roommates and partners in the business," Macheta said.
The more the pair looked into the issue, the more they realized there was a pressing need to find a better approach.
"There's about 2,000 lithium-ion batteries per person in the United States today. That's so many batteries and only 5% of them are recycled properly," Macheta said. "I'm from Syria and now there's this big problem of... electricity is limited. So a bunch of people are just moving towards solar power and that's producing so much waste in lithium-ion batteries. So I saw firsthand how big of a problem it is."
Lithium-ion batteries are used in everything from cell phones and laptops, to tools and scooters.
For the past year, Macheta and Riegert have been researching a chemical process for reclaiming battery materials.
They recently rebranded, naming their social venture "Converteca."
The process includes taking apart the battery, draining the energy in a brine solution so that it's safe to cut into, then separating what's inside the battery. Riegert said they then dissolve the batteries and you end up with what looks like a black mass.
"That black mass you can then turn into battery quality materials like lithium, cobalt, nickel and then they can use that to further produce more batteries," Riegert said.
There are companies already out there recycling lithium-ion batteries but Macheta and Riegert said Converteca's approach stands out with an industry-leading 98.3% reclamation rate.
"We took a look at the patents and we looked at sort of their chemistry behind it and compared it to ours and we think ours is different than theirs," Riegert said.
They are hoping to partner with a lab in Idaho that working on similar research and develop a patent.
Converteca also wants to make it easier for people to drop off their batteries and know they're actually being recycled and not ending up in a landfill.
Macheta said they will be doing more research in hopes of doing their work on a larger scale.
Competitions through UST's Schulze School of Entrepreneurship, like e-Fest, have helped them build their social venture.
Know a local business we should feature for our Behind the Business segment? Email Heidi Wigdahl at hwigdahl@kare11.com.
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