About
Starting Semester: Fall 2026Assigned: No
Location: Fairmount
The Battery Network
Client Profile
The Battery Network (formerly Call2Recycle, batterynetwork.org) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit headquartered in Atlanta, GA, and North America's largest battery stewardship and recycling program. Founded in 1994, the organization has collected over 170 million pounds of batteries to date — keeping hazardous materials out of landfills and recovering critical minerals including nickel, cobalt, and lead that feed back into domestic manufacturing supply chains.The Battery Network operates a national reverse logistics system connecting consumers, retailers, producers, and recyclers through a single integrated program. The U.S. network includes over 20,000 consumer collection points at retail partners such as The Home Depot and Lowe's, 9 regional sorting facilities, and more than 20 downstream recycling processors. Batteries collected span six chemistry types — lithium-ion, nickel cadmium (Ni-Cd), nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH), small sealed lead acid (SSLA), lithium primary (lithium metal), and alkaline/carbon zinc — as well as cellphones, each requiring separation before downstream processing.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation is rapidly expanding across U.S. states, and the implications for The Battery Network are significant — collection volumes are projected to grow 5x within the next five years. The infrastructure, sorting capacity, and logistics systems that support today's operations must be engineered to scale accordingly. The Battery Network sits at the intersection of the clean energy transition, domestic critical mineral recovery, and environmental compliance — making operational excellence not just a business imperative, but a national one.
The Battery Network is proud to have multiple Georgia Tech alumni among its team, including the project sponsor, a Georgia Tech ISyE graduate.
Project Description
The Battery Network's Fairmount, GA sorting facility (90,000 sq ft) currently processes approximately 150,000 lbs of mixed-chemistry batteries per month across two systems: a bulk drum sorting line and box sorting tables. Batteries enter the facility mixed by chemistry type — lithium-ion, nickel cadmium (Ni-Cd), nickel metal hydride (Ni-MH), small sealed lead acid (SSLA), lithium primary (lithium metal), alkaline/carbon zinc, and cellphones — and must be separated by chemistry before transfer to downstream recycling processors, each of which accepts only specific battery types.The current sorting operation has grown organically and has not been systematically designed or measured. There is no established baseline for throughput performance (lbs/hour), labor utilization, or indirect labor consumption — direct or indirect. The Battery Network seeks a team to establish a rigorous current-state baseline, identify waste and inefficiency, and design a best-in-class sorting operation built for performance and scale.
The facility has sufficient floor space to design and construct a parallel greenfield operation alongside the current system, enabling the new design to be validated under live conditions without disrupting existing throughput. The Battery Network is fully committed to implementing the team's recommendations — fabrication resources and mechanical support will be made available on-site to build what the team designs.
With collection volumes projected to grow 5x over the next five years due to expanding EPR legislation, the Fairmount facility must be engineered to scale. The sorting operation designed through this project will serve as the operational template for The Battery Network's broader national network.
Additionally, manual data entry associated with the sorting operation is a known source of non-value-added indirect labor. While a next-generation integrated data capture system is planned as a separate future initiative, the current project should baseline the time and labor consumed by data entry as part of its waste identification work, and the redesigned sorting operation should be designed with future data system integration in mind.
This is the first project in an intended long-term senior design partnership, with future engagements planned to progressively map, analyze, and optimize The Battery Network's full national network.
The team will have full and unrestricted access to the Fairmount facility. All site visits will be reimbursed at the current IRS business mileage rate (72.5 cents/mile as of April 2026). For intensive on-site work periods requiring consecutive days at the facility, The Battery Network will provide additional support as needed.