Traditional technologies for waste
lithium-ion battery (LIB) recovery
have the disadvantages of the use of corrosive acid and reductants,
release of toxic gases, and a complex pretreatment procedure of aluminum
foil exfoliation. In this study, a clean hydrometallurgical process
is presented for the recovery of critical metals and aluminum foil
from waste LIB cathode materials in a single step using an ethylene
glycol (EG)–citric acid (CA) leaching system. The effects of
reaction parameters, such as EG/CA molar ratio, temperature, time,
and solid–liquid ratio on the leaching efficiencies of critical
metals were carefully investigated. Here, 99.1% Li, 96.2% Co, 97.6%
Ni, and 98.3% Mn were leached under optimized reaction conditions.
Leaching kinetics show that the chemical reactions are the rate-controlling
steps in the process. Characterization results confirm that the high
leaching efficiency for critical metals is attributed to the condition
of adding ethylene glycol as a reducing agent. Aluminum foil can be
completely recycled because of the inhibiting effect of the newly
generated citric ester in the EG–CA system. This process provides
a novel alternative to conventional methods of recovery of metals
from waste LIBs.
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