EV Battery Recycling Patents: Recent Innovations

Recycling lithium-ion battery cathode materials in a way that allows extracting valuable elements like cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium in a form that can be used to make new battery cathodes. The recycling process involves leaching the spent battery materials to extract the desirable elements, precipitating them to form a precursor cathode material, and then adjusting the composition to achieve the desired molar ratios of elements for the new cathode chemistry. The precursor is then calcined and sintered to form the final recycled cathode material. The process allows efficient recovery and reuse of the valuable cathode elements from mixed chemistry batteries, reducing waste and environmental impact.

Source

Recycling lithium from spent lithium-ion batteries using a partial oxygen roasting process that consumes the existing carbon from the anode material instead of adding additional carbon sources. This allows recovering lithium as lithium carbonate without interfering with the thermal reduction of the cathode material. The partial oxygen roasting activates the anode graphite and prevents complete cathode metal reduction, yielding soluble lower oxidation states. This increases lithium recovery compared to inert or reducing environments.

Source

A method to recover valuable metals like copper, cobalt, nickel, iron, and cadmium from lithium-ion battery waste using sulfide precipitation. The method involves introducing a sulfide reductant to the leach solution containing the metals to precipitate out metal sulfides. The precipitated sulfides are then separated from the remaining solution to remove the targeted metals. The process allows selective removal of specific metals from the leach stream while avoiding precipitation of other desirable metals like lithium.

Source

Recycling method for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries that reduces loss of valuable materials and better handles impurity removal compared to conventional methods. The recycling steps are: 1) Alkaline leaching with high pH to extract valuable materials. 2) Acid leaching to remove impurities like fluorine and copper. 3) Ion exchange to isolate and recover fluorine and copper. 4) Iron precipitation to separate iron. 5) Final pH adjustment to recover lithium.

Source

Recycling lithium from high nickel content lithium-ion batteries like NMC 811 to extract lithium selectively from the black mass of recycled batteries. The process involves leaching lithium from the black mass using a dilute sulfuric acid solution. The lithium is selectively extracted due to the high molar ratio of nickel in the cathode materials. The leaching is done at 60-100°C for 1-6 hours. The lithium sulfate solution is then concentrated, filtered, and crystallized to recover the lithium. The approach avoids over-leaching of nickel and cobalt impurities.

Source

Recycling lithium-ion batteries to produce high-concentration lithium compounds that can be used to return lithium to the supply chain. The process involves smelting the batteries to oxidize and separate the lithium from other metals. The lithium-rich slag is then leached selectively to extract lithium without co-extracting other elements like aluminum. This allows clean and efficient lithium recovery compared to traditional smelting.

Source

A method for separating and recovering valuable metals like nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium from waste ternary lithium batteries. The method uses a strongly-oxidative selective acid like persulfate to leach the battery powder under acidic conditions. The leaching is done in a way that inhibits cobalt and manganese extraction while allowing nickel and lithium extraction. This separates the metals initially. The leaching residue is then processed separately to extract cobalt and prepare active manganese dioxide.

Source

Recovering lithium from lithium-ion battery waste using a multi-stage process involving evaporation, crystallization, and reaction. The process involves evaporating water from the battery waste stream to concentrate the lithium and sodium. The concentrated stream is then cooled to crystallize out the sodium sulfate. The remaining lithium-rich stream is heated and sodium carbonate is added to react with the lithium and form lithium carbonate. The lithium carbonate is separated from the reaction mixture.

Source

A method to recover lithium from lithium-ion battery scrap using water-based techniques. The steps involve calcining the scrap, dissolving lithium in water, extracting and concentrating the lithium, neutralizing and recovering impurities, and carbonating the lithium concentrate to obtain lithium carbonate. This avoids complex chemical processing steps and enables efficient lithium recovery from the calcined battery scrap.

Source

A process for recovering metals from lithium-ion battery waste streams like black mass that optimizes recovery of additional metals beyond nickel and cobalt while efficiently separating out impurities. The process involves purifying the waste stream to remove fluorine, phosphate, and impurity metals like copper, aluminum, iron, and titanium. Nickel, manganese, and cobalt are then separated from the purified stream using co-precipitation or chromatography. Finally, lithium is precipitated from the intermediate stream containing the separated metals.

Source

Recycling lithium-ion batteries to extract valuable materials like cobalt, manganese, nickel, and lithium from spent batteries. The recycling process involves generating a solution of aggregate battery materials from spent cells, precipitating impurities, adjusting the solution to achieve a desired ratio of desirable materials, and then precipitating the desirable material in that ratio to form cathode material for a new battery. The adjustments balance factors like pH, oxidation state, and electrodeposition to remove impurities and collateral remnants from the recycling stream.

Source

Recycling lithium-ion battery waste more efficiently by extracting impurities from the leaching solution using a simple, pH-controlled process. The process involves lowering the pH to around 1.2-2.15 to precipitate copper, then raising it to around 6 to extract calcium fluoride, titanium hydroxide, aluminium hydroxide, iron hydroxide, and iron phosphate. This allows removal of multiple impurities in a single step instead of multiple stages. The copper precipitation is induced using iron powder. Lime is added after copper removal. This avoids losing valuable metals during impurity removal. The lower pH step also enables higher copper recovery.

Source

A method to recover lithium from lithium ion battery scrap that involves optimized steps to efficiently extract lithium from the scrap with higher purity compared to conventional methods. The method includes calcining the scrap, dissolving the lithium in water, concentrating it through solvent extraction and stripping, neutralizing any impurities like nickel, and finally carbonating to obtain lithium carbonate.

Source

Recycling lithium-ion batteries by separating their components to recover valuable metals like cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium. The recycling process involves grinding and pyrolyzing the batteries, then electrostatic separation to extract graphite, lithium, and metals from the resulting black mass. This allows recycling of critical battery materials in a way that is efficient, safe, and maximizes recovery of valuable metals.

Source

Recycling of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) to recover active cathode materials for use in new batteries. The recycling process involves leaching out cathode materials from spent LIBs, purifying the resulting solution, and then precipitating out recovered cathode precursor particles for sintering into active cathode materials. The improvement is doping the leach solution with small amounts of trace elements like fluorine that increase the percentage of certain oxidation states on the recovered cathode particle surface. This improves battery performance compared to undoped recycled cathodes.

Source

A method and apparatus for recovering and reusing valuable metals from discarded lithium-ion batteries is described. The method involves heat treating discarded electrode scraps to remove binders and separating out the metal-containing active material. The active material is then further processed to improve its properties before reuse.

Source

Recycling lithium-iron phosphate (LFP) batteries to extract lithium efficiently. The method involves processing the black mass material from LFP batteries to recover lithium in a commercial recycling process. The black mass is adjusted to pH 8-11 and Fe:P ratio, then filtered to separate ferrous phosphate. This produces a solution rich in lithium sulfate. The lithium can be further extracted from this solution. The filtered black mass has less phosphorus and iron, enabling better lithium recovery. The process also allows recovering iron and phosphorus as fertilizer byproducts.

Source

Environmentally friendly, cost-effective process for recycling lithium-ion battery electrode materials by removing the polymer binder without damaging the active materials. The method involves soaking the electrode assembly in a solution of lithium alkoxide to decompose the binder. This separates the electrode material from the current collector, allowing recovery of the electrode material for reuse.

Source

Extracting and recycling metals from spent lithium-ion batteries using deep eutectic solvents as a more environmentally friendly alternative to pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. The process involves leaching metals from battery waste with deep eutectic solvents containing hydrogen bond donor and acceptor compounds. The dissolved metal ions can be recovered by precipitation or electrodeposition and reused for new batteries.

Source

Method for reusing positive electrode active materials of lithium batteries to extract and recycle valuable lithium and transition metal elements without using acids or solvents. It involves thermal treating electrode scrap to remove binder and collect the active material, washing it with a basic lithium solution, and annealing to produce reusable active material.

Source