Issue 38, 2019

Impurity removal with highly selective and efficient methods and the recycling of transition metals from spent lithium-ion batteries

Abstract

The use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is skyrocketing since they are widely applied in portable consumer devices and electric vehicles. However, at the end of their lifetime, large amount of spent LIBs will result in a negative environmental impact and aggravate the problem of resource shortage without proper disposal. Therefore, recycling is an effective solution, which will be enforced in the near future. Herein, the purification, recovery and reuse of transition metals from spent LIBs were thoroughly studied. First, the target impurities in a solution were effectively removed individually. Iron(III) and aluminum(III) impurities were removed by adjusting the pH value, whereas copper(II) was purified using highly selective electrodeposition technology and solvent extraction. Second, Ni0.41Co0.21Mn0.38(OH)2 was co-precipitated by adjusting the pH value of the purified metal solution, containing nickel(II), cobalt(II) and manganese(II) ions to 11 with NaOH and a proper amount of NH3·H2O. The comprehensive loss in nickel(II), cobalt(II) and manganese(II) was only 0.37% in the purification and co-precipitation procedures. Finally, LiNi0.41Co0.21Mn0.38O2 (marked as LNCM-R) synthesized with the recycled materials was tested and compared with LiNi0.41Co0.21Mn0.38O2 (marked as LNCM-N) synthesized with new materials as the control group. The XRD, SEM and TEM results indicate that both samples have the same structure and morphology. Furthermore, the charge–discharge tests, initial dQ/dV curves, EIS and GITT results indicate a similar electrochemical performance of the LNCM-R and LNCM-N samples. The purification and recycling strategies in our research have high efficiency and comparatively low cost, which provide great guidance for the industrial recycling of spent Li-ion batteries.

Graphical abstract: Impurity removal with highly selective and efficient methods and the recycling of transition metals from spent lithium-ion batteries

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 mar 2019
Accepted
12 jun 2019
First published
16 jul 2019
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

RSC Adv., 2019,9, 21922-21930

Impurity removal with highly selective and efficient methods and the recycling of transition metals from spent lithium-ion batteries

F. Peng, D. Mu, R. Li, Y. Liu, Y. Ji, C. Dai and F. Ding, RSC Adv., 2019, 9, 21922 DOI: 10.1039/C9RA02331C

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements