Preliminary Investigation of NiO Anode for NCA/NiO Battery from Spent Catalyst Recovery

Abstract

Spent nickel catalyst is the catalyst residue that has lost its catalytic function. Spent nickel catalyst contains Ni metal which is already high and environmentally hazardous. This problem can be solved by recovering the spent nickel catalyst as an anode and combined with lithium nickel cobalt oxide (NCA) as a cathode for lithium ion batteries. A study about it has never been conducted. The method used to treat the spent catalyst was acid leaching using 1 M citric acid and 4 M hydrochloric acid at 70-80°C for 2 hours, then continued with precipitation and thermal decomposition. Another method employed was direct sintering at 800°C for 12 hours. Material characterisation was carried out by X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry (AAS), Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR), and X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF), while electrochemical performance was carried out by NEWARE Battery Analyzer and BTS software. The results of this study indicate that Ni can be recovered with hydrochloric acid as much as 15.387 gr higher than citric acid as much as 11.831 gr from 20 gr sample. The XRD pattern also indicates the presence of crystals NiO I and NiO II in the leached and sintered material. The results of acid leaching in the form of NiO I was perfectly formed, but NiO still has a little impurity. Electrochemical performance was tested with a cylindrical battery resulting in a discharge capacity of 37.210 mAh g−1.