Advances in Intelligent Regeneration of Cathode Materials for Sustainable Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Abstract

policies in clean energy industry. [10][11][12] As shown in Figure 1a, it is conservatively estimated that the shipment volume of LIBs in 2025 (439.32 GWh) is nearly doubled compared with that in 2021 (237.44 GWh) and the corresponding global market closes to $106.81 billion, mainly resulting from the great popularization of electric vehicles. In addition, based on market analysis and forecast, the percent of LIBs with lithium iron phosphate (LFP) and lithium nickel cobalt manganese oxide (NCM) cathode materials is continuously increasing at a high speed (Figure 1b), which will firmly dominate the market for a long time because of their notably technical advantages. [13,14] There is no doubt that the mature LIBs industry really brings a great number of benefits to our life, such as the convenience and cleanliness. [15][16][17] However, as every coin has two sides, some key issues behind the popularized LIBs applications cannot be neglected. Lithium (Li) metal and other transitional metals (TMs) like cobalt (Co), nickel (Ni), and manganese (Mn) have been consumed in large quantities to manufacture the cathode materials for fulfilling the tremendous production of LIBs. [18][19][20][21] These metallic resources are rare on the earth with high cost and limited geographic distribution. Moreover, the Co and Ni metals are toxic, which are not environmental-friendly and jeopardize to human health. [11,[22][23][24] Therefore, in the back of prosperity of LIBs, we are also facing the emerging resources crisis and seriously secondary environmental pollution problems as long as the massive retired LIBs are present and not appropriately treated in following several years. [25][26][27] To make "Waste-be-Wealth," the effective strategy should be employed to tackle the waste LIBs problems in a green and sustainable way. [28,29] Nowadays, the conventional pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical technologies are only two existing industrial approaches in recycling the cathode materials of retired LIBs, which, yet, just focus on the recovery target of rare metallic resources (e.g., Co, Ni, and Li) from faded cathode materials. [30,31] As illustrated in Figure 2, in terms of the pyrometallurgical method, it usually involves the high temperature process to smelt the end-of-life cathode materials, in which the valuable metal elements are sintered into alloy forms after several purification and separation processes. Thus, this process usually needs high energy consumption and will unavoidably Explosively increased market penetration of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in electric vehicles, consumer electronics, and stationary energy storage devices has recently aroused new concerns on nonrenewable metal resources and environmental pollution because of the forthcoming wave of retired popularized LIBs. Recycling the retired LIBs in an environmentally sustainable and cost-effective way thus becomes much urgent and imperative. As a preferable route, the direct regeneration strategy has been innovatively proposed to repair degraded cathode mat...

Recycling Hazardous and Valuable Electrolyte in Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries: Urgency, Progress, Challenge, and Viable Approach

“…The reusing of all compositions in spent LIBs for manufacturing new LIBs is the ideal goal to achieve the closed-loop for recycling spent LIBs. , The regeneration technologies of cathodes and anodes have been well-reviewed in some studies. ,− However, the regeneration process of the electrolyte cannot refer to the cathodes and anodes due to the special characteristics of the electrolyte. Furthermore, due to the different and complex compositions as well as the composition alteration (new impurities) caused by chemical reactions between electrolyte and electrodes during the charge–discharge process, it is a big challenge to achieve electrolyte regeneration with comparable performance to the commercial electrolyte.…”

Highly efficient lithium-ion battery cathode material recycling using deep eutectic solvent based nanofluids

“…[19][20][21] Raw metal species comprise the cathode; thus, the main concern is the recycling of raw metal elements in cathode materials. 22,23 Several studies focused on the recycling and reuse of valuable metals in cathode materials. The recycling of the cathode mostly relies on three approaches, namely, pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and the novel solvent-leaching method.…”

“Dual‐ Engineering” Strategy to Regulate NH4V4O10 as Cathodes for High‐Performance Aqueous Zinc Ion Batteries

“…Electrochemical energy storage devices are key to this goal and must fulfill the following requirements: high safety, no environmental pollution, high energy and power density, availability of resources, and long cycle life. Over the past few years, lithium-ion batteries have gained popularity among researchers for their high energy density and high working voltage, [3,4] making them the preferred electrochemical energy storage solution. Nonetheless, the gradual depletion of lithium resources has resulted in increasing production costs, and concerns about their safety and environmental impact, including the toxicity and flammability of organic electrolytes, may DOI: 10.1002/smll.202301870 hamper future development of lithiumion batteries.…”