High-Efficiency Preferential Extraction of Lithium from Spent Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Powder via Synergistic Treatment of Mechanochemical Activation and Oxidation Roasting

Abstract

With the increasing demand for lithium, the improvement of lithium recovery efficiency from spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has become a popular topic to meet both resource and environmental requirements. Here, by using pyrite as a novel reducing agent, more than 99.9% of lithium can be preferentially and selectively extracted into weakly alkaline solutions after the synergistic treatment of mechanochemical activation (MA) and oxidation roasting (OR). Mechanochemical activation can impart a very high reactivity to the mixture of cathode powder and pyrite, which facilitates the subsequent oxidative roasting and selective recovery of lithium. Many physical properties of ball-milled powder have been investigated to characterize its superiority, and the thermodynamic behavior of the roasting process has also been explored to clarify the specific reaction course. Of particular importance, the environmental implications and economics of the overall process have been explained in detail to show that the whole recovery process is promising.