Pneumatic separation and recycling of anode and cathode materials from spent lithium iron phosphate batteries

Abstract

A novel approach to recycling of copper and aluminum fragments in the crushed products of spent lithium iron phosphate batteries was proposed to achieve their eco-friendly processing. The model of pneumatic separation that determines the optimal airflow velocity was established using aerodynamics. The influence of the airflow velocity, and the density and thickness, and their ratios, of the aluminum and copper fragments on pneumatic separation were evaluated. The results show that the optimal airflow velocities of copper and aluminum fragments with and without the electrode materials are 3.27m/s and 1.67m/s, respectively. The accuracy and reliability of the present model was verified using a pneumatic separation experiment. It is concluded that graded pneumatic separation is unnecessary for the crushed particle size more than 9 mm. The experimentally determined optimal airflow velocity of the copper and aluminum fragments with and without the electrode materials is 3.3m/s and 1.7m/s, respectively. The mass fractions of the copper and aluminum fragments upon removal of the electrode materials after pneumatic separation are 97% and 96%, respectively, and both with the electrode material achieve 97.0%. The theoretically obtained optimal airflow velocities have good agreements with the experimentally obtained ones.

Environment-friendly technology for recovering cathode materials from spent lithium iron phosphate batteries

“…Essential for a successful separation by screening and CES sorting was a crushing process which completely liberated the components of the battery cell, namely cathode foil, anode foils, separator foil and volatile solvents from the electrolyte. Previous studies (Bi et al, 2019a, 2019b) reported that the best heat treatment temperature and time are 300°C and 120 minutes, respectively. An in-depth investigation of the crushing and sieving results of the cathode slices of an LFP power battery is presented in Table 1 and Figure 6.…”

Progress and Status of Hydrometallurgical and Direct Recycling of Li-Ion Batteries and Beyond

“…Many other processes not discussed herein are summarized in Table S11 in Supplementary Information [224][225][226][227][228]…”

A Model of Transport of Particulate Biomass in a Stream of Fluid

“…The topic of modeling the movement of particles in a stream of fluid is a crucial one in the context of the process of pneumatic transport, as well as the purification and separation of non-homogeneous mixtures [1,2]. These processes appear in many branches of industry, such as coal mining [3], environment and waste management [4], as well as agriculture and the food industry [5][6][7], with additional weight given to this problem by the huge quantity of materials involved. Such a model, if developed properly, may then be used to bolster these processes by predicting the behavior of the processed material during their course.…”

“…This allows them to be used as discriminatory traits for the separation of particles of similar sizes, which cannot be fully achieved by other means [8][9][10]. This method, known as pneumatic separation [4,5], is particularly important whenever significant differences in shape and mass, coupled with relatively similar particle sizes, occur between the desired material and the waste. This is commonly the case in the agriculture industry (e.g., grain versus chaff and shells), but also in the sortition of particulate biomass for the purposes of renewable energy production and waste management.…”