Application of Electrodialysis for the Selective Lithium Extraction Towards Cobalt, Nickel and Manganese from Leach Solutions Containing High Divalent Cations/Li Ratio

Abstract

The present work aims at investigating the potentialities of implementation of electrodialysis for the recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries. In this work, the use of highly-selective membrane toward lithium(I) in electrodialysis was investigated to recover selectively lithium(I) toward cobalt(II), nickel(II) and manganese(II) by means of monovalent ion-selective membranes. It was shown that the presence of divalent cations in the leach solution is responsible for a significant decrease of the limiting current despite an increase in ionic conductivity. Therefore, monitoring the ionic conductivity was not sufficient to operate electrodialysis under optimal conditions, especially when highly selective membranes were used. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that the current has to be lower than the limiting current to avoid metal hydroxide precipitation into the membrane porosity by monitoring the limiting current over time.

Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling: Metal Recovery from Electrolyte and Cathode Materials by Electrodialysis

“…The composition of the synthetic leach solution was representative of leach solutions of NMC111 cathodic materials, i.e. 2.40 g L −1 lithium(I), 8.5 g L −1 cobalt(II), 8.9 g L −1 nickel(II), 4.6 g L −1 manganese(II) and 53 g L −1 sulfate [15]. The pH of the aqueous solutions containing the metal salts was adjusted at 2.8 by adding 0.1 mol L −1 sulfuric acid.…”

“…Electrodialysis can also be used to extract metals from leaching solutions of cathode materials as mentioned previously. In our previous work [15], it was demonstrated that electrodialysis can be used to extract selectively and concentrate lithium from an aqueous solution containing cobalt(II), nickel(II), manganese(II) and lithium(I) in acidic sulfate solutions. However, the presence of divalent cations in the leach solution was responsible for metal hydroxide precipitation into the membrane porosity.…”

“…Recently, we investigated the potentialities of electrodialysis for the separation of lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese from acidic sulfate solution without the use of any chelating agents by means of monovalent ion-selective membranes [15]. This work pointed out that the presence of divalent cations in the leach solution was responsible for metal hydroxide precipitation into the membrane porosity.…”

Application of Hybrid Electrobaromembrane Process for Selective Recovery of Lithium from Cobalt- and Nickel-Containing Leaching Solutions

“…Membrane methods for separating the components of spent LIBs are still under development [ 1 ]. Selective electrodialysis (SED) is most commonly used to extract Li + ions from LIB leachates [ 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The SED technology differs from conventional electrodialysis in the use of multiple units of at least one special-grade ion-exchange membrane (cell pair).…”

“…They pass singly charged ions well and reject multiply charged ones. This makes it possible to efficiently separate Li + ions from Co 2+ , Ni 2+ and Mn 2+ [ 18 ].…”