Water promises to be the key to mass recycling lithium ion batteries

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Lithium Metal Battery Recycling Technology.

Producers use toxic organic solvents to produce and process lithium-ion batteries. This complicates processes and makes them dangerous to the environment and human health. Less harmful and widespread recycling of batteries can be made by forgoing solvents in favour of aqueous solutions.

Battery manufacturers are sceptical about the use of aqueous solutions in process processes. Water reacts with lithium and degrades battery parameters. But scientists have decided to take on the challenge, and there are some encouraging results along the way.

In a new study, a group led by Jianlin Li (Jianlin Li) from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Zheng Li (Zheng Li) from the Polytechnic University of Virginia replaced the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder popular among battery manufacturers Two others: a latex-based water-dispersible binder and a water-soluble styrene-butadiene. The first is clearly used together with an organic solvent (usually N-methyl-2-pyrolidon, NMP), and the other two interact with water.

Can I lithium car batteries be recycled.

Binders are used to make cathodes and battery anodes. Electrodes include electrochemical materials in the form of powders (Metals and Graphite), which must be shaped and applied to current collectors made of copper or aluminium foil. If PVDF is used for the manufacture of electrodes, organic solvents are used, which are also used for the processing of electrodes after the service life of the batteries. Switching to aqueous solutions and water-soluble binders makes it possible to get rid of harmful solvents both at the battery production stage and at the processing stage.

Subsequent experiments with cathode and anode batteries produced with aqueous solutions showed that after 1,000 charging cycles, battery operation was almost the same as that of reference batteries produced using organic solvents. There is hope to place harmful production on a more environment-friendly basis.

Lithium battery disposal.

Industry analysts predict that by 2030, 10 million tons of obsolete batteries will be lost. Due to technical and economic problems, less than 5% of the retired batteries are now recycled. Imagine if all this has to be recycled not with water, but with «dirty» chemistry. And you have to recycle it, because the lithium on Earth isn’t infinite.