Excerpt from recyclinginternational.com
Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign claim a new electrochemical process could revolutionise lithium-ion battery recycling.
The innovation relies on a selective electrodeposition method to recover valuable metals from battery electrodes, says Professor Xiao Su, who oversees the project. The chemical and bio-molecular engineering specialist explains that this technology yields purities of 96.4% and 94.1% for cobalt and nickel, respectively, from spent nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) electrodes.
Su and his team conducted several tests in which they combined the electrolyte-polymer method with dismantled, leached and liquefied components of fully discharged NMC battery electrodes.