Water-Based Electrode Manufacturing and Direct Recycling of Lithium-Ion Battery Electrodes—A Green and Sustainable Manufacturing System

Abstract

HIGHLIGHTS Aqueous processed NCM523 cathodes show performance comparable with the NMP processed one The spent NCM523 compound was separated from other cathode components in water The spent NCM523 was successfully relithiated, restored and showed performance comparable with the pristine This provides a potential path toward green and sustainable battery manufacturing

The importance of design in lithium ion battery recycling – a critical review

“…The recovered NCM523 cathode material was re-lithiated, and shown to have a performance similar to the unused material. 34…”

Emerging trends in sustainable battery chemistries

“…Such re-lithiation methods are commonly followed by thermal annealing with small Li 2 CO 3 or LiOH excess to regain their original structure. While direct regeneration using solid-state sintering especially with low-cost Li 2 CO 3 has been reported [26,27], its shortcomings include the need for an accurate determination of the Li content in spent cathodes, which is challenging to achieve in recycling large batches of spent LIBs from different waste streams. Thus, hydrothermal, molten eutectic salt, or other self-saturating re-lithiation strategies are more effective in direct recycling.…”

“…Figure 3A summarizes some potential approaches reported in the literature that can meet both objectives simultaneously. At the electrode level, use of harmful organics during material separation can be reduced if water-or alcohol-soluble binders can be adopted over traditional N-methyl-2pyrrolidone (NMP) based polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binders [27]. To facilitate direct recycling and reduce the occurrence of secondary cathode particle cracking commonly seen in spent batteries, single-crystal-type cathode particles can be adopted instead, which are easier to directly regenerate and exhibit a lower probability of particle cracking [37,38].…”

Direct Recycling of Blended Cathode Materials by Froth Flotation

“…[29] For instance, spent NCM523 cathode powders was rejuvenated by mixing with LiOH, followed by a thermal process at 700 C for 6 h in air. [30] Although many efforts have been devoted to the relithiation process, separation processes are needed to recycle high-purity cathode active materials from spent LIBs. Separation of individual battery materials from spent LIBs has been previously investigated at a laboratory scale.…”

“…[31] For LIBs using water-based binders, cathode active materials can be harvested by dissolving binders in water, followed by removing carbon additives using a centrifugal process. [30] For a mixture of anode and cathode active materials, a froth flotation process was used to separate cathode active materials from black mass. [32] Figure 1 shows a typical flowsheet of a direct recycling process.…”