No abstract

This research was carried out to recover some valuable metals from the electrodes of the scrap mobile phone batteries by using the leaching process in the laboratory. Two types of scrap mobile phone batteries were used in this study: nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) and lithium-ion batteries (Li-ion). Both batteries were first crushed and their principal components were analyzed. Subsequently leaching was carried out. For simultaneous recovery of both metals, the preliminary results indicated that H 2 SO 4 provided better leaching than HNO 3 under the same conditions. The optimum leaching was at an acid concentration of 2.5 M, leaching temperature of 70• C, solid-liquid ratio of 15 g/l, and leaching time of 60 min. Under these conditions, approximately 95% of nickel (Ni) and 59% of cobalt (Co) were leached. The presence of a reducing agent such as H 2 O 2 had very little effect on the leaching efficiency of both metals. The leaching process of both the metals was a second-order reaction of the metal concentration in the solution.