(151d) Hydrometallurgical Recycling of Valuable Materials from Lithium-Ion Battery Scrap; A Process Route

The demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIB) is expected to continuously increase in the coming years. Lithium-ion batteries are one of the most important forms of energy storage and contain valuable substances (e.g., manganese, cobalt, nickel, lithium and graphite). At the end of their period of use, only a fraction of batteries is recycled and the majority of LIBs end up in landfills. However, due to the increasing demand for LIBs and the growing scarcity of finite resources, a circular economy concept must be developed for the recycling of manganese, cobalt, nickel, lithium and graphite. The precipitation of manganese, cobalt, nickel and lithium in batch-mode has already been investigated. Within this work, we demonstrate a hydrometallurgical process route for the recycling of valuable substances from black mass (cathode and anode scrap). After dismantling and discharging of the battery, the cathode and anode material is crushed and the resulting black mass is dissolved by a hydrogen peroxide assisted leaching step. The graphite is separated by a flotation step. Afterwards, the valuable metals (manganese, nickel, cobalt and lithium) are recovered by a multi-step precipitation process. The combination of a pH dependent precipitation with precipitation agents (e.g., dimethylglyoxime, sodium carbonate) and a continuous operation offers the possibility for isolation of the valuable metals (manganese, cobalt, nickel, lithium), a constant product quality and a low dead time.