A Combined Pyro- and Hydrometallurgical Approach to Recycle Pyrolyzed Lithium-Ion Battery Black Mass Part 1: Production of Lithium Concentrates in an Electric Arc Furnace

Due to the increasing demand for battery raw materials such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium, the extraction of these metals not only from primary, but also from secondary sources like spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is becoming increasingly important. One possible approach for an optimi...

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Published inMetals (Basel ) Vol. 10; no. 8; p. 1069
Main Authors Sommerfeld, Marcus, Vonderstein, Claudia, Dertmann, Christian, Klimko, Jakub, Oráč, Dušan, Miškufová, Andrea, Havlík, Tomáš, Friedrich, Bernd
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2020
Subjects
circular economy
cobalt
Cobalt base alloys
Copper base alloys
Copper compounds
Design
Electric arc furnaces
Electric currents
Hydrometallurgy
Lithium
lithium minerals
Lithium-ion batteries
lithium-ion battery
Manganese
Materials recovery
Metallurgy
Metals
Nickel
Raw materials
Rechargeable batteries
Recycling
Simulation
Slag
Slagging
Smelting
Germany
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Summary:Due to the increasing demand for battery raw materials such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, and lithium, the extraction of these metals not only from primary, but also from secondary sources like spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is becoming increasingly important. One possible approach for an optimized recovery of valuable metals from spent LIBs is a combined pyro- and hydrometallurgical process. According to the pyrometallurgical process route, in this paper, a suitable slag design for the generation of slag enriched by lithium and mixed cobalt, nickel, and copper alloy as intermediate products in a laboratory electric arc furnace was investigated. Smelting experiments were carried out using pyrolyzed pelletized black mass, copper(II) oxide, and different quartz additions as a flux to investigate the influence on lithium-slagging. With the proposed smelting operation, lithium could be enriched with a maximum yield of 82.4% in the slag, whereas the yield for cobalt, nickel, and copper in the metal alloy was 81.6%, 93.3%, and 90.7% respectively. The slag obtained from the melting process is investigated by chemical and mineralogical characterization techniques. Hydrometallurgical treatment to recover lithium is carried out with the slag and presented in part 2.
ISSN:2075-4701
2075-4701
DOI:10.3390/met10081069