Recycling Metals from Wastes: A Novel Application of Mechanochemistry

Abstract

Recycling metals from wastes is essential to a resource-efficient economy, and increasing attention from researchers has been devoted to this process in recent years, with emphasis on mechanochemistry technology. The mechanochemical method can make technically feasible the recycling of metals from some specific wastes, such as cathode ray tube (CRT) funnel glass and tungsten carbide waste, while significantly improving recycling efficiency. Particle size reduction, specific surface area increase, crystalline structure decomposition and bond breakage have been identified as the main processes occurring during the mechanochemical operations in the studies. The activation energy required decreases and reaction activity increases, after these changes with activation progress. This study presents an overall review of the applications of mechanochemistry to metal recycling from wastes. The reaction mechanisms, equipment used, method procedures, and optimized operating parameters of each case, as well as methods enhancing the activation process are discussed in detail. The issues to be addressed and perspectives on the future development of mechanochemistry applied for metal recycling are also presented.

An environmental benign process for cobalt and lithium recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries by mechanochemical approach

“…In recent decades, considerable researches have been focused on metal recovery by mechanochemical method (Tan and Li, 2015;Yuan et al, 2012). With a non-thermal process, Kano et al (2009) recovered indium (In) through mechanochemical reduction of In 2 O 3 /ITO by milling with Li 3 N under a non-oxidative state of NH 3 and/or N 2 gas environment.…”

Innovative leaching of cobalt and lithium from spent lithium-ion batteries and simultaneous dechlorination of polyvinyl chloride in subcritical water

“…Spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) contain large quantities of valuable metals such as cobalt (Co) and lithium (Li) and thus are an attractive secondary mineral resource [1][2][3]. Interest in recycling Co and Li from spent LIBs has recently increased for environmental and economic purposes [4][5][6][7].…”

Waste not want not: life cycle implications of gold recovery and recycling from nanowaste

“…Recycling strategies such as the one we present in this paper can help mitigate the supply risk of critical raw materials in the future. 60 Recently there has been a surge in research on recovery and recycling of precious metals and REEs from anthropogenic waste streams 61 (e.g., cellphones, 62 hard drives, 63 printed circuit boards, 64 liquid crystal displays, 65 used fluorescent lamps, 66 sewage sludge ash 28 ) as well as the natural environment (e.g., seawater 67 ). However, we must analyze recycling approaches from a life cycle perspective to identify unanticipated environmental burdens.…”