KIT scientists reclaim lithium from spent batteries

Recovering valuable metals from battery waste has long posed a headache to recyclers but a German consortium led by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology claims it may have the answer. 

Lithium-ion batteries have become omnipresent in our life. While nickel, cobalt, copper, aluminium and steel are recovered from battery waste, extracting lithium remains ‘expensive and hardly profitable’, laments Dr Oleksandr Dolotko, who leads the new R&D project.

His team is proposing a mechano-chemical approach, using mechanical processes to induce chemical reactions. The work targets different chemistries such as LiCoO₂, LiMn₂O₄, Li(CoNiMn)O₂, and LiFePO_4.

Dolotko says tests have demonstrated a lithium recovery rate of up to 70% without corrosive chemicals, high temperatures or the prior sorting of materials. ‘The method can be applied for recovering lithium from cathode materials from a large range of commercially available lithium-ion batteries,’ he underlines. ‘This enables inexpensive, energy-efficient and environmentally compatible recycling.’

The researchers use aluminium as the reducing agent. As aluminium is already within the cathode, no additional substances are required. The battery waste is ground down and the resulting material reacts with the aluminium to create metallic composites with water-soluble lithium compounds.

Lithium is recovered by dissolving these compounds in water and heating them to evaporate the water. Reaction takes place at room temperature and pressure.

The R&D efforts are supported by Helmholtz Institute Ulm for Electrochemical Energy Storage, Ulm University, and EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG.