Issue 9, 2023

Self-powered recycling of spent lithium iron phosphate batteries via triboelectric nanogenerator

Abstract

The recycling of lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFPs), which represent more than 32% of the worldwide lithium-ion battery (LIB) market share, has raised attention owing to the valuable element resources and environmental concerns. However, state-of-the-art recycling technologies, which are typically based on electrochemical or chemical leaching methods, have critical issues such as tedious procedures, enormous chemical/electricity consumption and secondary pollution. Here, we report an innovative self-powered system composed of an electrochemical LIB recycling reactor and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) for recycling spent LFP. In the electrochemical LIB recycling reactor, the Cl−/ClO− pair generated electrochemically in NaCl solution is adopted as the redox mediator to break down LFP into FePO4 and Li+via the redox targeting reaction without extra chemicals. Additionally, a TENG that utilizes discarded components from LIBs including casings, aluminum-plastic films and current collectors is designed to drastically minimize secondary pollutants. Furthermore, the TENG harvests wind energy, delivering an output of 0.21 W for powering the electrochemical recycling system and charging batteries. Therefore, the proposed system for recycling spent LFP exhibits high purity (Li2CO3, 99.70% and FePO4, 99.75%), self-powered features, simplified treatment procedure and a high profit, which can promote the sustainability of LIB technologies.

Graphical abstract: Self-powered recycling of spent lithium iron phosphate batteries via triboelectric nanogenerator

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
12 Apr 2023
Accepted
21 Jul 2023
First published
02 Aug 2023

Energy Environ. Sci., 2023,16, 3873-3884

Self-powered recycling of spent lithium iron phosphate batteries via triboelectric nanogenerator

B. Zhang, L. He, J. Wang, Y. Liu, X. Xue, S. He, C. Zhang, Z. Zhao, L. Zhou, J. Wang and Z. L. Wang, Energy Environ. Sci., 2023, 16, 3873 DOI: 10.1039/D3EE01156A

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