Rapid growth in the market for electric vehicles is imperative, to meet global targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, to improve air quality in urban centres and to meet the needs of consumers, with whom electric vehicles are increasingly popular. However, growing numbers of electric vehicles present a serious waste-management challenge for recyclers at end-of-life. Nevertheless, spent batteries may also present an opportunity as manufacturers require access to strategic elements and critical materials for key components in electric-vehicle manufacture: recycled lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles could provide a valuable secondary source of materials. Here we outline and evaluate the current range of approaches to electric-vehicle lithium-ion battery recycling and re-use, and highlight areas for future progress. Processes for dismantling and recycling lithium-ion battery packs from scrap electric vehicles are outlined.

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Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles

Tremendous efforts are being made to develop electrode materials, electrolytes, and separators for energy storage devices to meet the needs of emerging technologies such as electric vehicles, decarbonized electricity, and electrochemical energy storage. However, the sustainability concerns of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and next-generation rechargeable batteries have received little attention. Recycling plays an important role in the overall sustainability of future batteries and is affected by battery attributes including environmental hazards and the value of their constituent resources. Therefore, recycling should be considered when developing battery systems. Herein, we provide a systematic overview of rechargeable battery sustainability. With a particular focus on electric vehicles, we analyze the market competitiveness of batteries in terms of economy, environment, and policy. Considering the large volumes of batteries soon to be retired, we comprehensively evaluate battery utilization and recycling from the perspectives of economic feasibility, environmental impact, technology, and safety. Battery sustainability is discussed with respect to life-cycle assessment and analyzed from the perspectives of strategic resources and economic demand. Finally, we propose a 4H strategy for battery recycling with the aims of high efficiency, high economic return, high environmental benefit, and high safety. New challenges and future prospects for battery sustainability are also highlighted.

Sustainable Recycling Technology for Li-Ion Batteries and Beyond: Challenges and Future Prospects.

Commercialization of Lithium Battery Technologies for Electric Vehicles

Recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has attracted significant attention in recent years due to the increasing demand for corresponding critical metals/materials and growing pressure on the environmental impact of solid waste disposal. A range of investigations have been carried out for recycling spent LIBs to obtain either battery materials or individual compounds. For the effective recovery of materials to be enhanced, physical pretreatment is usually applied to obtain different streams of waste materials ensuring efficient separation for further processing. Subsequently, a metallurgical process is used to extract metals or separate impurities from a specific waste stream so that the recycled materials or compounds can be further prepared by incorporating principles of materials engineering. In this review, the current status of spent LIB recycling is summarized in light of the whole recycling process, especially focusing on the hydrometallurgy. In addition to understanding different hydromet...

A Critical Review and Analysis on the Recycling of Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

Lithium-ion battery (LIB) applications in consumer electronics and electric vehicles are rapidly growing, resulting in boosting resources demand, including cobalt and lithium. So recycling of batteries will be a necessity, not only to decline the consumption of energy, but also to relieve the shortage of rare resources and eliminate the pollution of hazardous components, toward sustainable industries related to consumer electronics and electric vehicles. The authors review the current status of the recycling processes of spent LIBs, introduce the structure and components of the batteries, and summarize all available single contacts in batch mode operation, including pretreatment, secondary treatment, and deep recovery. Additionally, many problems and prospect of the current recycling processes will be presented and analyzed. It is hoped that this effort would stimulate further interest in spent LIBs recycling and in the appreciation of its benefits.

Recycling of Spent Lithium-Ion Battery: A Critical Review

Recycling of lithium-ion batteries: a novel method to separate coating and foil of electrodes

Ecological Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles with Focus on Mechanical Processes

Effect of impurities caused by a recycling process on the electrochemical performance of Li[Ni0.33Co0.33Mn0.33]O2

The use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has grown since the market entry of portable power tools and consumer electronic devices. Soon, the need for LIB will rise, when they are used in hybrid and full electric vehicles as well as in energy storage systems to enable the use of renewable energies. To prevent a future shortage of cobalt, nickel, and lithium and to enable a sustainable life cycle of these technologies, new recycling processes for LIBs are needed. These new processes have to regain not only cobalt, nickel, copper, and aluminum from spent battery cells but also a significant share of lithium. Therefore, this article approaches unit operations and their combination to set up for efficient LIB recycling processes, especially considering the task to recover high rates of valuable materials with regard to involved safety issues. Further discussed unit operations are 

Deactivation/discharging of the battery
Disassembly of battery systems (specifically for EV-battery systems)
Mechanical processes (including inert crushing, sorting, and sieving processes and a special case: thermomechanical separation)
Hydrometallurgical processes
Pyrometallurgical processes




Specific dangers are associated with LIB recycling processes: electrical dangers, chemical dangers, burning reactions, and potential interactions of the single dangers. Furthermore, industrial process chains, already in use, as well as research approaches are summarized. The processes of the companies Retriev Technologies, Recupyl, Batrec, Inmetco, Xstrata, Umicore, Accurec, AEA Technology, OnTo Technology, and Lion Engineering are discussed and illustrated briefly. A closer look is given to some results of the research project LithoRec.


Keywords:

recycling;
lithium-ion battery;
recovery;
lithium;
cobalt;
nickel;
electric vehicles

Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries

This article describes two ways to recover valuable and ecologically critical active materials from spent lithium-ion electrodes and electrode production rejects, using the example of a system containing LiNi0.33Co0.33Mn0.33O2 (NMC) active material and a polyvinylidene fluoride (PVdF) binder. First, a physical process using thermal treatment and mechanical stressing to separate the coating from the aluminum foil is discussed. Furthermore, a wet chemical processing using the solvent n-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) is presented. Recovered coating materials from both processes were characterized by laser diffraction spectroscopy and atomic absorption spectroscopy. Additionally, recycling electrodes were produced and successfully tested in battery test cells.

Christian Hanisch

Papers

Recycling of lithium-ion batteries: a novel method to separate coating and foil of electrodes

Ecological Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles with Focus on Mechanical Processes

Effect of impurities caused by a recycling process on the electrochemical performance of Li[Ni0.33Co0.33Mn0.33]O2

Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries

Recovery of Active Materials from Spent Lithium Ion Electrodes and Electrode Production Rejects