Chinese Researchers Develop Method to Extract Nearly 100% of Critical Materials in Used Li-Ion Batteries

­Chinese researchers have developed a method to recover 99.99 per cent of the lithium, 96.8% of the nickel, 92.35% of the cobalt and 90.59% of the manganese in spent lithium-ion batteries.

The key to extracting these critical minerals is apparently the use of an amino acid – glycine, specifically – which alleviates the need for harsh chemicals in the recycling process along with the creation of toxic byproducts.

This comes at a crucial time – with the explosion of portable electronics and EVs (and the latter slowly taking over global fleets), lithium-ion batteries are more ubiquitous than ever before. The worldwide market is worth around $60 billion and one estimate predicts it’ll top $300 billion by 2030.

Current recycling methods introduce a number of issues – pyrometallurgy requires temperatures exceeding 1,000 °C, making it an energy hog, while hydrometallurgy – which works at temperatures < 200 °C, with material recovery rates of up to 93% for lithium, nickel and cobalt – still produces a ton of wastewater.

With this new process, micro batteries break down the lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, while glycine extracts the metals.

In a study entitled “A Green and Efficient Recycling Strategy for Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries in Neutral Solution Environment,” researchers noted that “This green and efficient strategy in neutral solution environment opens a new pathway to realize the large-scale pollution-free recycling of spent batteries.”

It achieves “ultrafast efficiency with reduced chemical consumption and corrosive wastewater, thus providing a promising and economic pathway for the battery recycling.”

Be sure to check out the study!