Recovery of Lithium, Nickel, Cobalt, and Manganese from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries Using l-Tartaric Acid as a Leachant

Abstract

Herein is reported a novel green process involving natural l-tartaric acid leaching, developed for the sustainable recovery of Mn, Li, Co, and Ni from spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Operating conditions affecting the leaching efficiencies of Mn, Li, Co, and Ni, including the concentrations of l-tartaric acid (C4H6O6) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), pulp density, temperature, and leaching time, were investigated. The leaching efficiencies were 99.31% for Mn, 99.07% for Li, 98.64% for Co, and 99.31% for Ni under the optimized conditions (4 vol% H2O2, 2 M l-tartaric acid, 17 g/L pulp density, 70 °C, and 30 min). The leaching mechanism was studied preliminarily based on the structure of l-tartaric acid. The kinetics data for the leaching of Mn, Li, Co, and Ni fit best to the shrinking-core model of chemical control. For the first stage, the activation energies (E as) for the leaching of Mn, Li, Co, and Ni were 66.00, 54.03, 58.18, and 73.28 kJ/mol, respectively. For the second stage, the E as for the leaching of Mn, Li, Co, and Ni were 55.68, 53.86, 58.94, and 47.78 kJ/mol, respectively. The proposed hydrometallurgical process was found to be simple, efficient, and environmentally friendly.

Progress and Challenges on Battery Waste Management :A Critical Review

“…[68] The leaching efficiencies of manganese, lithium, cobalt, and nickel were 99.31%, 99.07%, 98.64%, and 99.31%, respectively. [68] The corresponding reactions were:…”

“…This technique is applicable to alkaline, Z NnÀ C, NiMH, and Li-ion batteries. [64,65] Different types of materials had been employed as leaching reagents to extract metals from spent batteries (Table 4), including reducing agents such as Na 2 SO 3 , [66] H 2 O 2 , [65,[67][68][69] ascorbic acid [70,71] and glucose. [72] The main factors that affect the leaching process are reaction time, temperature, and concentrations of the leaching and reducing agents.…”

Recycling of mixed cathode lithium‐ion batteries for electric vehicles: Current status and future outlook

“…Typical optimization process of acid leaching parameters: A, Acid concentration ( l ‐tartaric acid, C 4 H 6 O 6 ), (B) reductant concentration (H 2 O 2 ), (C) pulp density, and (D) temperature and leaching time. Adapted with permission: Copyright 2017, American Chemical Society [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]…”

Recent advances on hydrometallurgical recovery of critical and precious elements from end of life electronic wastes - a review

“…Even though the Co leaching by inorganic acids proved efficient, toxic and hazardous Cl 2 , Sox, and NOx will also be co-generated as by-products. In order to overcome this problem, several other organic lixiviants such as glycine (Nayaka, Pai, Santhosh, & Manjanna, 2016), malic acid (Li et al, 2010), oxalic acid (Sun & Qiu, 2012), citric acid (Zheng et al, 2016), acetic acid (Golmohammadzadeh, Rashchi, & Vahidi, 2017), succinic acid (Li et al, 2015) and tartaric acid (He, Sun, Mu, Song, & Yu, 2016) were also proposed to leach out Co from spent LiBs. Similar to inorganic acids, the leaching efficiency of Co from LiBs is increasing with increase in organic acids concentration and temperature.…”