Transient and dry recycling of battery materials with negligible carbon footprint and roll-to-roll scalability

Abstract

Battery recycling becomes increasingly important due to the ubiquitous application of Li-ion batteries that challenges both critical material supply and environmental sustainability. Compared with pyro- and hydro-metallurgy, direct recycling recovers...

Fundamentals, status and challenges of direct recycling technologies for lithium ion batteries

“…56 To improve the separation efficiency, Zhang et al proposed a transient separation method based on either shock-type heating or continuously rolled-over heating. 57 Taking spent graphite anode as an illustration (Fig. 6a), this method swiftly decomposes the styrene-butadiene rubber binder, effortlessly detaching the anode graphite particles from the copper foil, resulting in a material collection rate as high as 98.7%.…”

“…For instance, in situ mass spectrometry (MS) enables the real-time detection of the type and rate of gas generated during battery recycling, facilitating the analysis and exploration of possible reaction mechanisms in different temperature ranges. 57,296 Furthermore, when used in combination with temperature-dependent detection methods like differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetric analysis (TG), it allows for systematic analysis of the chemical and physical reactions occurring during the recovery process. 295,297…”

Cathode regeneration and upcycling of spent LIBs: toward sustainability

“…35–37 It is delightful to notice a novel advance in materials separation from Huang and coworkers, who proposed a transient heating (1500 °C, 1s) approach for electrode material separation with 97% recovery ratio of active materials and nearly 100% of metal foils. 38 Meanwhile, binder network and conductive carbon can be effectively decomposed into gases under the dry high-temperature heating pretreatment beyond simple soaking by organic solvents, which is not practical and sustainable for scalable adoption. Flow charts of the pretreatment procedures of both recycling methods are shown in Fig.…”

A ‘cool’ route to battery electrode material recovery

“…Due to the physical black mass delamination and the low operation temperature of -10 to 0 o C icestripping method does not release any VOCs (volatile organic components) and environmentally harmful toxins that can be produced through high-temperature black-mass burning 24 , such as styrene, acrylates, unsaturated volatiles, or uorinated products in the binder was uoride-based. Moreover, due to technology exibility and chemically non-destructive conditions, any black mass composition can be freeze-induced and delaminated from the current collector without chemical transformation or decomposition.…”

“…Another challenge is to minimise the damage to the Al/Cu current collector 19,20 . Thermal treatments, organic solvents/acids, and basic dissolution delamination processes that have been reported will inevitably result in current collector damage and Al contamination during the delamination process [21][22][23][24] .…”