RecycLiCo™ Recycling Process for Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Active Materials

Abstract

The commercialization of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has resulted in vigorous development of various proprietary designs and formulations for their cathode active materials. Regarding the recycling of the spent LIB cathode active materials such as Co-containing ones, the incorporated other metal components such as aluminum, calcium, copper, magnesium, and zinc, can add some complexity to the recycling of the spent batteries. This chapter describes the basic concept and development of the RecycLiCo process through recycle and recover three different cathode compositions, lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide, lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide, and lithium-manganese dioxide, in acid with the addition of sulfur dioxide, followed by a series of precipitation stages to recover the solubilized metals either simultaneously or sequentially. A number of process options are evaluated and optimized in bench-type, locked-cycled semi-continuous experiments using lithium-cobalt oxide cathode material to result the RecycLiCo process flowsheet.