Chinese researchers announce battery recycling breakthrough

The invention uses tiny micro batteries to break down lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese from a battery before the metals are extracted using an amino acid. Additionally, the use of glycine as the amino acid avoids the use of harsh chemicals in the recycling process and the creation of toxic by-products, making the process significantly more environmentally friendly.

The biggest success of the new method, however, is the amount of raw materials that can be recovered, however: the newly developed system can recover 99.99 per cent of the lithium, 96.8 per cent of the nickel, 92.35 per cent of the cobalt and 90.59 per cent of the manganese from used batteries.

In the publication Angewandte Chemie (Applied Chemistry), the researchers conclude the research article entitled ‘Green and Efficient Recycling Strategy for Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries in Neutral Solution Environment’: “Therefore, it is sturdily confirmed that the intractable problem, the effective extraction is available only under the aggressive acid/alkali-ion conditions, is well-solved within a mild leaching atmosphere. This green and efficient strategy in neutral solution environment opens a new pathway to realize the large-scale pollution-free recycling of spent batteries.”

Just a few weeks ago, a similar battery recycling research project was launched in the EU, albeit with slightly less ambitious targets of reaching a 95 per cent recovery efficiency for metals such as cobalt, nickel and copper. Results will be a few years out, however, as the project’s runtime will go for four years until the end of 2028. Among automobile manufacturers, there has been growing interest in the battery resource field as well, as Toyota presented a battery recycling technique using less CO2 last month, and JLR announced major investments into the recycling company Cyclic Materials.

the-independant.com, onlinelibrary.wiley.com, onlinelibrary.wiley.com (full PDF)