Dawon Chemical Wins Top Prize at 'K-Battery Challenge'...Expands Battery Recycling Business by Reusing Mangcho By-Products

Dawon Chemical, a company specializing in secondary battery recycling, is expanding its business based on a technology that reuses “mangcho”—a by-product generated during the manufacturing and recycling processes of secondary batteries—as a resource.

On September 22, Dawon Chemical announced that it had won the top prize, the President’s Award from the Korea Environment Corporation, in the “2026 K-Battery Scaling Up Challenge (Phase 1)” under the theme of “Establishing a Demonstration-Based Solution for Recycling Cyclical Secondary Battery Industrial Waste and Recovering Valuable Resources.”

The company explained that the significance of this award lies in presenting a cyclical process technology that reduces waste treatment costs and increases the recovery rate of valuable resources such as lithium by recycling mangcho, which has long been a costly waste to manage in the secondary battery industry.

Mangcho, or sodium sulfate, is a large-scale by-product generated during the manufacturing and recycling processes of secondary batteries. Until now, most of it was considered waste requiring disposal, making waste treatment costs and environmental concerns factors that reduced the profitability of related companies.

Dawon Chemical has built a cyclical structure that enables mangcho to be reintegrated into its own recycling process. The core of this technology is to convert what previously had to be discarded into a resource, thereby reducing processing costs while increasing the recovery rate of key resources such as lithium.

The company expects that, through this technology, it can enhance its competitiveness from an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) perspective by developing an eco-friendly process, as well as improve the cost structure of its battery recycling business.

Leveraging this award, Dawon Chemical plans to accelerate demonstration projects aimed at deploying the technology in actual industrial field settings. With the first phase focused on concretizing the technology and business model now complete, the company will move on to phase two, where it will verify practical field applications.

The company will also broaden its business scope from mainly lithium recovery to recycling other process by-products. The goal is to become a comprehensive circular recycling company that covers the entire value chain—from the generation of waste materials to the recovery of valuable resources—rather than limiting itself to single-resource recovery.

Previously, in August 2026, Dawon Chemical was also selected as a “Promising Small Giant Company of Pohang City.” With both this recognition and its top prize in the K-Battery Scaling Up Challenge, the company expects to accelerate scaling up and commercialization based on technical demonstrations.

Lee Eunsol, CEO of Dawon Chemical, stated, “For continued growth in the secondary battery industry, it is essential to establish a fully circular system that enables the recovery of not only key resources but also process waste. Building on this award, we will promote stepwise demonstration and commercialization, aiming to become a leading company in building a resource-circulation ecosystem for secondary batteries.”

Dawon Chemical plans to apply its recycling technology for by-products such as mangcho to actual industrial sites and expand its resource recovery business, thereby establishing a cyclical secondary battery recycling business model.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.