Recovery of Valuable Metals from Lithium-Ion Batteries NMC Cathode Waste Materials by Hydrometallurgical Methods

Abstract

The paper focuses on the improved process of metal recovery from lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) cathode waste materials by using hydrometallurgical methods. In the acid leaching step, the essential effects of acidity concentration, H 2 O 2 concentration, leaching time, liquid-solid mass ratio, and reaction temperature with the leaching percentage were investigated in detail. The cathode material was leached with 2M H 2 SO 4 and 10 vol. % H 2 O 2 at 70 • C and 300 rpm using a liquid-solid mass ratio of 30 mL/g. In order to complete the recovery process, this paper designs the proper separation process to recover valuable metals. The leach liquor in the recovery process uses Cyanex 272 to first extract Co and Mn to the organic phase. Secondly, Co and Mn are separated by using D2EHPA, and a high purity of Co is obtained. Thirdly, Ni is selectively precipitated by using DMG, and Ni is completely formed as a solid complex. Finally, in the chemical precipitation process, the remaining Li in the leach liquor is recovered as Li 2 CO 3 precipitated by saturated Na 2 CO 3 , and Co, Mn, and Ni are recovered as hydroxides by NaOH. This hydrometallurgical process may provide an effective separation and recovery of valuable metals from LIBs waste cathode materials.

A Fast Metals Recovery Method for the Synthesis of Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum Oxide Material from Cathode Waste

“…The inorganic acids present a satisfactory performance during leaching and achieve higher efficiency of metal extraction than organic acids [29]. Techniques that are used to prepare the final products from the leaching filtrate include solvent extraction [10,[30][31][32][33], electrochemical techniques [34][35][36], selective precipitation [21,[37][38][39][40], and co-precipitation [41][42][43]. Among these, co-precipitation is the most efficient technique for the recovery of more than one metal (mixed metal) due to a higher level of homogeneity and spherical/sphere-like products [44].…”

Purification of Lithium Carbonate from Sulphate Solutions through Hydrogenation Using the Dowex G26 Resin

“…The sulphate solutions came from a recycling LIBs waste cathode materials, which were done by previous research; their content is shown in Table 1 [18]. Sodium carbonate (Na 2 CO 3 ) was purchased from Nihon Shiyaku Reagent, Tokyo, Japan (NaCO 3 , 99.8%), for the chemical precipitation.…”

Recycling Chain for Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

“…The metals cobalt, nickel, copper, manganese, and iron bear an outstanding position in the recycling of LIBs due to their high intrinsic value and the comparatively low cost of recovery [56]. Here, pyrometallurgy can be combined with hydrometallurgical processes but pure hydrometallurgical processing is becoming more and more important [39,58,97,98]. When discussing different metallurgical technologies for the processing of spent LIBs, the pyro-and hydrometallurgical unit processes are compared as stand-alone.…”

“…Once dissolved, the metals are extracted from the solvent by liquid-liquid extraction, ion exchange, or chemical precipitation [69,77,97]. If the resulting metal salts meet the quality requirements of the corresponding raw materials, subsequent recovery can be forgone.…”