Recycling and Reusing of Spent Batteries

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Sciences".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2020) | Viewed by 7799

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences, University of Malaga, 29071 Malaga, Spain
Interests: Lithium-ion batteries, battery recycling and reuse; reactive-transport modeling; electrokinetic remediation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Sciences, University of Malaga, 29071 Malaga, Spain
Interests: battery recycling and reuse; electrokinetic remediation; soil remediation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today, Li-ion batteries are the most common energy-storage devices for portable electronics, and their use is rapidly increasing in the fields of transportation and renewable energy accumulation. These batteries are replacing the conventional Pb-acid and NMH secondary batteries in many applications, due to the multiple advantages of lithium-ion technology. Furthermore, similar technologies such as Na-ion and Al-ion batteries are also being developed and will soon become competitive with the Li-ion ones.

The growing use of these energy-storage devices is clearly connected to an increase in the number of disposed of batteries. This motivates the development of reusing and recycling technologies to mitigate the environmental impact of their disposal and to recuperate valuable components within the spent batteries. On one hand, a lot of electronic waste includes secondary batteries that are not spent yet and could be reused for a large number of additional cycles under adequate management. On the other hand, spent batteries (those that are either deteriorated or their packaging makes their reuse unpractical) require recycling processes with selective separation procedures to recuperate the valuable and/or dangerous components, such as cobalt, lithium, graphite, or phosphorous.

This Special Issue compiles cutting edge review and research papers addressing resource-efficient and economically-feasible reuse and recycling processes for modern secondary batteries.

Dr. Juan Manuel Paz-García
Dr. Maria Villen-Guzman
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • Spent batteries
  • lithium-ion batteries
  • recycling
  • electronic waste

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

9 pages, 1583 KiB  
Article
Hydrometallurgical Extraction of Li and Co from LiCoO2 Particles–Experimental and Modeling
by Maria del Mar Cerrillo-Gonzalez, Maria Villen-Guzman, Luis Fernando Acedo-Bueno, Jose Miguel Rodriguez-Maroto and Juan Manuel Paz-Garcia
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(18), 6375; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10186375 - 13 Sep 2020
Cited by 12 | Viewed by 3095
Abstract
The use of lithium-ion batteries as energy storage in portable electronics and electric vehicles is increasing rapidly, which involves the consequent increase of battery waste. Hence, the development of reusing and recycling techniques is important to minimize the environmental impact of these residues [...] Read more.
The use of lithium-ion batteries as energy storage in portable electronics and electric vehicles is increasing rapidly, which involves the consequent increase of battery waste. Hence, the development of reusing and recycling techniques is important to minimize the environmental impact of these residues and favor the circular economy goal. This paper presents experimental and modeling results for the hydrometallurgical treatment for recycling LiCoO2 cathodes from lithium-ion batteries. Previous experimental results for hydrometallurgical extraction showed that acidic leaching of LiCoO2 particles produced a non-stoichiometric extraction of lithium and cobalt. Furthermore, the maximum lithium extraction obtained experimentally seemed to be limited, reaching values of approximately 65–70%. In this paper, a physicochemical model is presented aiming to increase the understanding of the leaching process and the aforementioned limitations. The model describes the heterogeneous solid–liquid extraction mechanism and kinetics of LiCoO2 particles under a weakly reducing environment. The model presented here sets the basis for a more general theoretical framework that would describe the process under different acidic and reducing conditions. The model is validated with two sets of experiments at different conditions of acid concentration (0.1 and 2.5 M HCl) and solid to liquid ratio (5 and 50 g L−1). The COMSOL Multiphysics program was used to adjust the parameters in the kinetic model with the experimental results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recycling and Reusing of Spent Batteries)
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10 pages, 1452 KiB  
Article
Recovery of Li and Co from LiCoO2 via Hydrometallurgical–Electrodialytic Treatment
by M.M. Cerrillo-Gonzalez, M. Villen-Guzman, C. Vereda-Alonso, C. Gomez-Lahoz, J.M. Rodriguez-Maroto and J.M. Paz-Garcia
Appl. Sci. 2020, 10(7), 2367; https://doi.org/10.3390/app10072367 - 30 Mar 2020
Cited by 27 | Viewed by 4007
Abstract
Lithium-ion batteries play an important role in our modern society as the main option to power portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. The growing demand for these batteries encourages the development of more efficient recycling processes, aiming to decrease the environmental impact of [...] Read more.
Lithium-ion batteries play an important role in our modern society as the main option to power portable electronic devices and electric vehicles. The growing demand for these batteries encourages the development of more efficient recycling processes, aiming to decrease the environmental impact of the spent batteries and recover their valuable components. In this paper, a combined hydrometallurgical-electrodialytic method is proposed for processing battery waste. In the combined technique, the amount of leaching solution is reduced as acid is generated via electrolysis. At the same time, the use of ion-exchange membranes and the possibility of electroplating allows for a selective separation of the target metals. Experiments were performed using LiCoO2, which is one of the most used cathodes in lithium-ion batteries. First, 0.1 M HCl solution was used in batch extractions to study the kinetics of LiCoO2 dissolution, reaching an extraction of 30% and 69% of cobalt and lithium, respectively. Secondly, hydrometallurgical extraction experiments were carried out in three-compartment electrodialytic cells, enhanced with cation-exchange membranes. Experiments yielded to a selective recovery in the catholyte of 62% of lithium and 33% of cobalt, 80% of the latter electrodeposited at the cathode. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recycling and Reusing of Spent Batteries)
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