Li Recovery via Physical-Chemical Treatment from Spent EV Lithium-Ion Battery for Circular Economy

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is the main energy storage for electromobility vehicles. As the demand for LIBs rises, a significant amount of battery waste is produced, which contains numerous valuable metals and has a potential to be a substantial metal resource. Recycling is one of the most efficient method for recovering materials from used spent LIBs and transferring the material across the critical supply chain. In accordance with the consisting of organic components (electrolyte, separator, casing, etc.), the Li recovery technologies will involve the physical processes (crushing and sieving), followed by chemical processes (leaching and precipitating). In this work, the leachability of the valuable metal (Lithium: Li) was evaluated after the recovery process via variety of acid extraction, concentration of acid, leaching temperature, reaction time and solid/liquid (S/L) ratio. The leaching solution were evaluated by inductive plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). The optimum condition results in more than 99% of Li leaching under 2 M H2SO4 at 75 °C for 1 h. Co-precipitation of Na2CO3 and CO2 were applied to form lithium carbonate (Li2CO3), which was then crystallized via evaporation to a 95 % purity.