Sustainable Recovery of Cathode Materials from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries Using Lactic Acid Leaching System

Abstract

An environmentally friendly leaching process for recycling valuable metals from spent lithium-ion batteries is developed. A sol–gel method is utilized to resynthesize LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 from the leachate. Lactic acid is chosen as a leaching and chelating agent. The leaching efficiency is investigated by determining the contents of metal elements such as Li, Ni, Co, and Mn in the leachate using inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy. The spent cathode materials for the pretreatment process and the regenerated and freshly synthesized materials are examined using X-ray diffraction and scanning electronic microscopy. The results show that the leaching efficiencies of Li, Ni, Co, and Mn reached 97.7, 98.2, 98.9, and 98.4%, respectively. The optimum conditions are lactic acid concentration of 1.5 mol L–1, solid/liquid ratio of 20 g L–1, leaching temperature of 70 °C, H2O2 content of 0.5 vol %, and reaction time of 20 min. The leaching kinetics of cathode scrap in lactic acid fit well to the Avrami equation. Electrochemical analysis indicate that the regenerated LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 cathode materials deliver a highly reversible discharge capacity, 138.2 mA h g–1, at 0.5 C after 100 cycles, with a capacity retention of 96%, comparable to those of freshly synthesized LiNi1/3Co1/3Mn1/3O2 cathodes.

Recycling of Li−Ni−Mn−Co Hydroxide from Spent Batteries to Produce High‐Performance Supercapacitors with Exceptional Stability

“…[39] The typical mass loading of the asymmetric supercapacitor was 3.2 mg/cm 2 . The capacitance performance of the device can be demonstrated through the CVs at different scan rates (5,10,20,30,40, and 50 mV s À 1 ) as shown in Figure 4b, c. The device shows perfect electrochemical stability within the potential window 0-1.5 V. Moreover, the quasi-rectangular CV shape reveals a prominent faradic/capacitive behavior of the system. The CCCD analysis was carried out at different current densities (0.5, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 A g À 1 ) in the same potential window (0-1.5 V).…”

“…The huge demand for efficient energy storage devices in recent years prioritize Li‐ion batteries (LIBs) over other types of batteries due to their high energy density, low self‐discharge features, lightweight design, high faradic efficiency, longer lifespan, no memory effect, and low cost . The global market of LIBs was reported to be $30,186.8 million in 2017 and is estimated to increase to $100,433.7 million by 2025 .…”

“…The huge demand for efficient energy storage devices in recent years prioritize Li-ion batteries (LIBs) over other types of batteries due to their high energy density, low self-discharge features, lightweight design, high faradic efficiency, longer lifespan, no memory effect, and low cost. [1][2][3][4][5] The global market of LIBs was reported to be $30,186.8 million in 2017 and is estimated to increase to $100,433.7 million by 2025. [6,7] However, despite the utility of LIBs in many applications such as cell phones, iPods, PDAs, laptops, digital cameras, and electric vehicles, the chemical composition of LIBs is problematic, especially after their expiration due to the reactive metals and organic materials used.…”

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

“…Using this approach, the research group also regenerated NMC using lactic acid as the leachant and chelating agent, resulting in similar electrochemical performance. The good electrochemical performance suggests that lactic acid serves as a potent chelating agent, which is necessary to generate uniform nucleation sites and small crystallite sizes during calcination . In subsequent work, a similar resynthesis protocol was used to compare the performance of acetic and maleic acid .…”

Burgeoning Prospects of Spent Lithium‐Ion Batteries in Multifarious Applications

“…[63] Consequently, researchers found an efficient leaching-resynthesis technique, avoiding the multistage step separation of metal ions, minimizing the secondary pollution, by simple way of material synthesis from leachate and thereby enhancing the recycling efficiencies of metal ions attracting the great attention to use regenerated cathode material in the energy storage applications. [67,68] In the solid-state reaction, Co/ Ni-Mn-Co precursor is prepared first from the leach liquor via coprecipitation and the commercial/recovered Li 2 CO 3 or LiNO 3 is mixed with previously recycled precursor for calcination to regenerate the cathode material. In lixiviationsol-gel method, the recovered cathode material (NCM or LCO) from spent batteries is dissolved in either organic or inorganic acid media, and the leach liquor containing metal ions with the adjusted molar ratio is further coprecipitated to form a gel ( Figure 5).…”