An environment friendly
and cost-effective process has been developed
for production of LiOH from spent LFP cathode material. By using a
suspension electrolysis system comprising an electrodialysis process,
the spent LFP cathode material was oxidized and released lithium ion
in the anode chamber, which is similar to that in the charging of
an LFP battery. More than 95% of Li was leached and the current efficiency
can reach up to 85.81%. And then the resulting lithium ion was migrated
through the cation-exchange membrane and generated LiOH with OH– in the cathode chamber. High purity LiOH solution
could be obtained due to the impurities in anode chamber being insulated
by the monovalent permselectivity cation-exchange membrane. Kinetics
analysis indicates that the delithiation process on the anode electrode
was divided into two stages. In the first stage, the reaction rate
was limited by the electrochemistry. Thereafter, it was controlled
by the diffusion in the second stage. Finally, LiOH·H2O can be directly produced after evaporative crystallization via
vacuum evaporation. A green close-loop process was then proposed,
in which very little solid waste or wastewater is generated. Compared
with other recovery processes, the proposed process has the highest
profit due to the production of LiOH·H2O which is
more valuable and no chemical regents being consumed.