Journal of Material Sciences & Engineering

Pretreatment, Recycling, and Regeneration Strategies of Cathode Active Materials from Spent Lithium Ion Batteries

Abstract

Meng Zhou* , Steven Liaw, Quanwen Sun, and Rong He

Lithium Ion Batteries (LIBs) have paved the way for the creation of portable consumer electronics and electric vehicles. The demands for LIBs of various chemistries show no sign of slowing. Many valuable metals, like Lithium and Cobalt, are contained in batteries, located primarily on the cathode component. The burden from increasing demand of LIBs has attracted attention to reuse the valuable active materials from the cathodes. This paper reviews the recent development of reusing spent LIBs in three categories: Pretreatment, Recycling and Regeneration. Pretreatment covers discharging, dismantling of the spent LIBs and separation of the useful part from waste; Recycling focuses on the recovery of value materials, four strategies (pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, biometallurgy and electrochemical process) are discussed in details; Regeneration revives the spent electrodes, the mostly used methods are organized, including solid state synthesis, hydrothermal treatment, sol-gel and co-precipitation method. We summarize the advantages and disadvantages of each method, aim to organize the state-of-the-art technologies and provide a guideline for future development.