Recyclability of Lithium-Ion Batteries – Introduction and Hazards

There is an ever-growing need for lithium batteries. This is especially due to the rise of the electric transportation industry.

For this reason, we expect a huge amount of lithium-ion batteries to retire. This will lead to a serious disposal problem and significant environmental damage and energy conservation.

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Modern commercial lithium-ion batteries are made from transition metal oxides or phosphates, aluminum, copper, graphite, organic electrolytes containing harmful lithium salts, polymer separators, and cases. Without proper disposal, these chemicals and metals pose a huge threat to the environment.

The world has been fighting environmental pollution for a long time. And this is why lithium-ion batteries have been receiving a lot of attention recently.

At the same time, there is a pursuit for lithium batteries with higher energy density, safety, and affordability. Therefore, the materials used are ever-evolving, making it harder and harder to recycle them.

?Both technological innovators and governments are taking initiatives to find long-lasting solutions. Just no one can recycle Li-ion batteries.

In this guide, we shall be discussing more on the recyclability of these batteries. We want to share what you can do if you have dead lithium-based batteries.

Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries Recent Advances and Perspectives

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are the most common types of batteries today. They are widely used in mobile phones, laptops, cameras, and many other appliances. They have revolutionized the world of rechargeable batteries due to their excellent features like small size, superb capacity, long life cycle, high voltage, and moderate self-discharge. They came to the market about two decades ago, but they have left behind nickel-metal-hydride and nickel-cadmium batteries.

The global demand for LIB materials has been rising steadily. Hence, more attention has been given to the recycling process.

Recycling LIBs is hard than lead-acid or other battery technologies. This is because of the ever-developing technologies of these batteries. The materials used in making them have been changing from time to time as manufacturers seek a safer and stronger battery.

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Today, most LIBs have cobalt, nickel, and lithium in the cathode layer. Other materials have also been discovered for the cathode. These include LCO, LNO, LMO, and NMC. They are recently recognized as significant materials for the future of these batteries.

These materials can be recovered to make new batteries, reducing manufacturing costs. But the recycling of LIBs is not straightforward. It’s associated with many challenges before and during the recycling process. These can act as economic determinants when adopting some recycling processes.

Virgin materials are constantly fluctuating in their prices. Hence, many question the economic impact of recycling batteries.

Apart from that, the process of recycling LIBs is quite complex. It mainly requires compact and complex devices.

Over the years, different methods of recycling LIBs have been discovered. Some of them are cheaper and more successful than others.

Here are the most common methods today:

Hydrometallurgical Process

Today, most companies use hydrometallurgy to recycle LIBs. This is simply a process of recovering LIBs after pretreatment.

Depending on the physical properties of the specific battery, this method can be used anywhere in the world. The battery cases, electrodes, and membranes carrying the electrolytes are treated separately for safety. This also ensures a great recovery rate of hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical processes.

The whole process usually involves leaching and reduction. It is normally divided into acid leaching and the biological process of the method.

Zhang et al. (1998) recorded a 99% recovery of Co and Li in the acid leaching process. Nan et al. (2005) recorded a 98% recovery of Cu. Hydrometallurgy has a recovery far different from pyrometallurgy.

Pyrometallurgical Process

Another modern process is pyrometallurgy. It’s mostly used in the commercial recovery process. The commonly used approach is similar to ore smelting. Molecular LIBs are disassembled to specific cells and then put into the heating furnace.

The preheating, pyrolysis, and smelting processes are applied successively to reduce the batteries. The temperature at the preheating zone is maintained at 300 degrees Celsius, and the one at the pyrolyte zone is kept above 700 degrees Celsius.

Direct Physical Recycling

There is also the direct recovering process to remove useful components of LIBs. This method eliminates the use of chemicals.

The batteries are discharged and separated into thousands of cells. The small cells are then treated using supercritical CO2. The electrolytes are extracted and treated in the same process.

Both temperature and pressure, CO2 is removed from the electrolyte allowing for the regeneration of the electrolyte. From here, the cells are separated, broken, and sorted. Completing the process, cathode materials are collected and put to other uses.

Recycling Process of lithium-ion batteries

Recovering valuable cathode-active materials used in LIBs follows four different methods. There is the mechanical process, pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and direct physical recycling. A method can be used alone or in combination with another. For example, pyrometallurgy may require a hydrometallurgy process to recover valuable elements like cobalt and nickel.

Hydrometallurgy is considered the most unique and effective method. It’s eco-friendly with low energy consumption, effective reaction, reuse of some leaching chemicals, low gas emission, and high concentration of metal recovery.

Here are the general steps used:

Pretreatments

This process is used to separate the electrolyte materials from the batteries. Then the hydrometallurgy process follows.

Discharging

This process is crucial as it reduces the chances of short-circuiting and self-ignition. It’s therefore important to discharge them entirely.

Mechanical Separation

Now that the battery is completely disassembled, it’s manually dismantled, separating the cathode, anode, separator, steel, and plastic. Due to the complexity of this process, crushing, sieving, magnetic separation may be more economical.

Dissolution

This is the separation of cathode-active materials from the AI foil.

Ultra-washing

This is the explosion of small bubbles that recovers the cathode-active materials.

Heat Treatment

This method is used to remove PVDF polymers and carbon black from the cathode material.

Lithium-ion Battery Disposal Hazards

Lithium batteries have chemical components that pose a threat to the environment. They are considered hazardous and packaged with similar items even when traveling. And this is why proper disposal and recycling are required.