Graphitic carbon materials extracted from spent carbon cathode of aluminium reduction cell as anodes for lithium ion batteries: Converting the hazardous wastes into value-added materials

Abstract

Spent carbon cathode (SCC), a hazardous solid waste generated from the primary aluminium industry, is successfully purified by a graphitization process to eliminate the environmental damage. The purity of as-abtained carbon from SCC increases from 63.64% to 100% and shows uniform and high graphitization, the fine graphitized carbon with defects, the partial hollow structures, the slightly expanded interlamellar spacing (0.34–0.37 nm) and a small amount of graphene structure. When SCC-2600 is used as an anode material for LIBs, it shows good reversible capacity (460.1 mAh g−1 at 0.1 C after 50 cycles), excellent rate capability (430.2, 388.6, 353.5, 287.3, 111.1 and 68.2 mAh g−1 at 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, and 10 C, respectively). And then, SCC-2600 reveals a potential high-capacity anode material for LIBs in comparation with the low voltage plateaus (<0.3 V) of graphite. Therefore, it provides a new way to recycle and utilize the hazardous solid waste. What's more, the higher capacity and the unique discharge plateaus of SCC-2600 can be explicated by the multi-structure assisted graphite/graphene co-intercalation lithiation mechanism.