Effective regeneration of high-performance anode material recycled from the whole electrodes in spent lithium-ion batteries via a simplified approach

Abstract

Along with the extensive application of energy storage devices, the spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are unquestionably classified into the secondary resources due to its high content of several valuable metals. However, current recycling methods have the main drawback to their tedious process, especially the purification and separation process. Herein, we propose a simplified process to recycle both cathode (LiCoO2) and anode (graphite) in the spent LIBs and regenerate newly high-performance anode material, CoO/CoFe2O4/expanded graphite (EG). This process not only has the advantages of succinct procedure and easy control of reaction conditions, but also effectively separates and recycles lithium from transition metals. The 98.43% of lithium is recovered from leachate when the solid product CoO/CoFe2O4/EG is synthesized as anode material for LIBs. And the product exhibits improved cyclic stability (890 mAh g−1 at 1 A g−1 after 700 cycles) and superior rate capability (208 mAh g−1 at 5 A g−1). The merit of this delicate recycling design can be summarized as three aspects: the utilization of Fe impurity in waste LiCoO2, the transformation of waste graphite to EG, and the regeneration of anode material. This approach properly recycles the valuable components of spent LIBs, which introduces an insight into the future recycling.