End-of-life nickel–cadmium accumulators: characterization of electrode materials and industrial Black Mass

Abstract

The aim of this paper is the characterization of spent NiCd batteries and the characterization of an industrial Black Mass obtained after crushing spent NiCd batteries and physical separation in a treatment plant. The characterization was first performed with five cylindrical NiCd batteries which were manually dismantled. Their characterization includes mass balance of the components, active powders elemental analysis and phase identification by X-ray powder diffraction. Chemical speciation of the two metals was also investigated. For cadmium, speciation was previously developed on solid synthetic samples. In a spent battery, the active powders correspond to about 43% of the battery weight. The other components are the separator and polymeric pieces (5%), the support plates (25%) and the carbon steel external case (27%). The sequential procedure shows that the nickel in the positive powders from the dismantled Ni-Cd batteries is distributed between Ni0 (39.7%), Ni(OH)2 (58.5%) and NiOOH (1.8%). Cadmium in the negative powder is about 99.9% as the Cd(OH)2 form with 0.1% of metal cadmium. In the industrial Black Mass, the distribution of cadmium is the same, whereas the distribution of nickel is Ni0 (46.9%), Ni(OH)2 (43.2%) and NiOOH (9.9%). This material contains also 1.8% cobalt and approx. 1% iron.

Recycling and substitution of light rare earth elements, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, and praseodymium from end-of-life applications - A review

“…A Li-ion battery has higher gravimetric energy, longer useful life period, no maintenance compared to Ni-MH batteries (Battery University, 2019; Sonoc et al, 2015). On the other hand, the end-of-life nickel-cadmium batteries are not a plausible substitute for Ni-MH batteries mainly because nickel and cadmium contains carcinogenic agents which are harmful to human health (Hazotte et al, 2015).…”

Selective Recovery of Cadmium, Cobalt, and Nickel from Spent Ni–Cd Batteries Using Adogen® 464 and Mesoporous Silica Derivatives

“…Spent Ni–Cd batteries are composed mostly of Ni–Cd electrode components corresponding to around 43–49% of battery weight. The remainder comprises the outer case steel parts/fundamental plates (40–49%) and feed- and Ni grids (9%), electrolyte, and 2% plastic constituents [ 5 , 6 ].…”

Recovery of Metals from Secondary Raw Materials by Coupled Electroleaching and Electrodeposition in Aqueous or Ionic Liquid Media

“…Reconstructed black mass from spent Ni/Cd batteries: the active powders from spent Ni/Cd batteries (so-called "black mass") were used. Black mass was recovered from end-of-life SANYO batteries after manual dismantling [18]. The active powders of anode and cathode were gathered and homogenized to give a reconstructed black mass.…”