The increasing usage of electrical drive systems and stationary energy storage worldwide lead to a high demand of raw materials for the production of lithium-ion batteries. To prevent further shortage of these crucial materials, ecological and efficient recycling processes of lithium-ion batteries are needed. Nowadays industrial processes are mostly pyrometallurgical and as such energy and cost intensive. The LithoRec projects, funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB), aimed at a realization of a new energy-efficient recycling process, abstaining high temperatures and tracing mechanical process-steps. The conducted mechanical processes were thoroughly investigated by experiments in a laboratory and within technical scale, describing gas release of aged and non-aged lithium-ion batteries during dry crushing, intermediates, and products of the mechanical separation. Conclusively, we found that applying a second crushing step increases the yield of the coating materials, but also enables more selective separation. This work identifies the need for recycling of lithium-ion batteries and its challenges and hazard potential in regards to the applied materials. The outlined results show a safe and ecological recycling process with a material recycling rate of at least 75%.
Herein, a discrete element method (DEM) approach is proposed to investigate the impact of the calendering process on the electrical and ionic conductivities and on the adhesion strength of Li[Ni1/3 Mn1/3 Co1/3]O2 (NMC)‐based electrodes. For this purpose, key correlations between the microstructure and these electrode‐scale properties are established using the outcomes of the simulations and real experiments. In addition, the evolution of the structure and the development of mechanical stress are also studied numerically during electrochemical cycling, offering a closer insight into the intercalation mechanism. Finally, the impact of the initial noncalendered porosity on the electrode mechanical response is examined, showing that higher initial porosities lead to lower final porosities under same calendering loads. Overall, this work demonstrates the potential of DEM simulations in improving the understanding of the microstructure and mechanics of lithium‐ion electrodes.
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