Recycling Chain for Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

The recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIB) is becoming increasingly important with regard to environmental, economic, geostrategic, and health aspects due to the increasing amount of LIB produced, introduced into the market, and being spent in the following years. The recycling itself becomes a challenge to face on one hand the special aspects of LIB-technology and on the other hand to reply to the idea of circular economy. In this paper, we analyze the different recycling concepts for spent LIBs and categorize them according to state-of-the-art schemes of waste treatment technology. Therefore, we structure the different processes into process stages and unit processes. Several recycling technologies are treating spent lithium-ion batteries worldwide focusing on one or several process stages or unit processes.

Early-Stage Recovery of Lithium from Tailored Thermal Conditioned Black Mass Part I: Mobilizing Lithium via Supercritical CO2-Carbonation

“…They both comprise benefits and drawbacks; for example, in hydrometallurgy also ignoble elements, like Fe, Al and C, can be recovered, but on the other hand, the processing goes along with comparatively slow kinetics [6]. Depending on individual core objectives, the cells can be charged into a smelter without any pretreatment [3], but regarding a circular economy approach, it is beneficial to consider pretreatment steps [7] in order to maximize resource efficiency. Besides conventional industrial treatments, different studies are in place to give an overview also on innovative emerging recycling paths [8,9] and also approaches to evaluate the environmental impacts of different paths [10][11][12].…”

“…This thermal runaway can occur, for example, during scrap transport, storing, but also by mechanical processing due to this mechanical, electrical or thermal abuse [17]. Several studies report the second advantage of thermal pretreatments, namely an improved detaching of black mass from the cell´s current collector foils [7,16,[18][19][20][21]. Additionally, suitable mechanical preconditioning concepts are required for efficient downstream processing, especially for hydrometallurgical treatments [3].…”

A Combined Pyro- and Hydrometallurgical Approach to Recycle Pyrolyzed Lithium-Ion Battery Black Mass Part 1: Production of Lithium Concentrates in an Electric Arc Furnace

“…Although lithium does not represent a critical metal, its recovery, especially regarding future battery systems, where lithium will be manifested as an indispensable cathode component, becomes essential. In the field of battery recycling, research projects have been carried out for several years dealing with both single and combined mechanical, pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes as well as pyrolysis to recover battery components [5,10,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. However, the focus is set mainly on critical and valuable metals, which is the reason why lithium as a component has not been sufficiently considered [24].…”

Challenges in Ecofriendly Battery Recycling and Closed Material Cycles: A Perspective on Future Lithium Battery Generations

“…As a great advantage in advance can be mentioned the great robustness of this way to various types of batteries [17]. Prior to thermal processing, the batteries are dismantled, whereby plastic and metal housing parts in particular are removed, and the cells are exposed [56]. Then, these are pyrolyzed in the shaft furnace at three different process temperatures (400-1450 • C).…”