Closed Loop Recycling of Electric Vehicle Batteries to Enable Ultra-high Quality Cathode Powder

作者：Mengyuan Chen, Zhangfeng Zheng, Qiang Wang, Yubin Zhang, Xiaotu Ma, Chao Shen, Dapeng Xu, Jin Liu, Yangtao Liu, Paul Gionet, Ian O’Connor, Leslie Pinnell, Jun Wang, Eric Gratz, Renata Arsenault, Yan Wang · 发表于：Scientific Reports · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1038/s41598-018-38238-3 · 被引用次数：126 · 研究领域：Extraction and Separation Processes、Advancements in Battery Materials、Recycling and Waste Management Techniques

The lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling market is becoming increasingly important because of the widespread use of LIBs in every aspect of our lives. Mobile devices and electric cars represent the largest application areas for LIBs. Vigorous innovation in these sectors is spurring continuous deployment of LIB powered devices, and consequently more and more LIBs will become waste as they approach end of life. Considering the significant economic and environmental impacts, recycling is not only necessary, but also urgent. The WPI group has successfully developed a closed-loop recycling process, and has previously demonstrated it on a relatively small scale 1 kg spent batteries per experiment. Here, we show that the closed-loop recycling process can be successfully scaled up to 30 kg of spent LIBs from electric vehicle recycling streams, and the recovered cathode powder shows similar (or better) performance to equivalent commercial powder when evaluated in both coin cells and single layer pouch cells. All of these results demonstrate the closed-loop recycling process has great adaptability and can be further developed into industrial scale.