Closed-loop hydrometallurgical treatment of end-of-life lithium ion batteries: towards zero-waste process and metal recycling in advanced batteries
This work presents an enhanced hydrometallurgical process for recycling lithium ion batteries. First, end-of-life batteries were processed in a physical pre-treatment plant to obtain a representative electrode material. The resulting leachate was purified forth by iron-precipitation, liquid–liquid extractions, and an innovative Li–Na separation, in order to obtain valuable products. These products include high-grade graphite, cobalt oxide (Co3O4, purity 83%), cobalt oxalate (CoC2O4, purity 96%), nickel oxide (NiO, purity 89%), and lithium carbonate (Li2CO3, purity 99.8%).