Sustainable Recycling of Spent Lithium-ion Batteries : An In-situ Approach for Recovery and Alloying of Valuable Metals

Sammanfattning: A large number of Li-ion batteries are used today that reach their End-Of-Life (EOL) in a few years. After their EOL, the recovery of their precious elements is required. By applying a series of pretreatments, a fraction with fine particle size is left behind which is known as Black Mass (BM). BM is rich in LIB precious materials, including Li metal oxides and graphite. In this study, pyrometallurgical recycling of BM is investigated. In the first step, its high-temperature transformations is studied, focusing on the reduction of Li metal oxides, Li evaporation, and F removal. In the second step, Fe and Cu oxides are added to BM to use its graphite as a reducing agent and form alloys with Co and Ni. Mechanical activation is employed to improve the kinetics of the reactions and improve the efficiency of the reduction reaction. The thermodynamics software (FactSage and HSC) is employed to model the experiments in this study.