Environmentally friendly automated line for recovering aluminium and lithium iron phosphate components of spent lithium-iron phosphate batteries

• Published in: Waste management & research Vol. 39; no. 9; pp. 1164 - 1173
• Main Authors: Bi, Haijun, Zhu, Huabing, Zhan, Jialin, Zu, Lei, Bai, Yuxuan, Li, Huabing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.09.2021; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Air currents; Aluminum; Batteries; Dismantling; Dust collectors; Economic impact; Electrolytes; Heavy metals; Impact mills; Iron; Iron phosphates; Lithium; Lithium-ion batteries; Load distribution; Metal foils; Organic chemicals; Organic chemistry; Powder; Recovering; Recycling; Recycling systems; Separators; Sizing screens; Theoretical analysis; crushing; exhaust gas purification treatment; automatic line; air current separator; Spent lithium iron phosphate battery; evaluation of automatic line
• ISSN: 0734-242X; 1096-3669
• DOI: 10.1177/0734242X20982060

Lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries contain metals, toxic electrolytes, organic chemicals and plastics that can lead to serious safety and environmental problems when they are improperly disposed of. The published literature on recovering spent LFP batteries mainly focuses on policy-making and conceptual design. The production line of recovering spent LFP batteries and its detailed operation are rarely reported. A set of automatic line without negative impact to the environment for recycling spent LFP batteries at industrial scale was investigated in this study. It includes crushing, pneumatic separation, sieving, and poison gas treatment processes. The optimum retaining time of materials in the crusher is 3 minutes. The release rate is the highest when the load of the impact crusher is 800 g. An air current separator (ACS) was designed to separate LFP from aluminium (Al) foil and LFP powder mixture. Movement behaviour of LFP powder and Al foil in the ACS were analysed, and the optimized operation parameter (35.46 m/s) of air current speed was obtained through theoretical analysis and experiments. The weight contents of an Al foil powder collector from vibrating screen-3 and LFP powder collector from bag-type dust collector are approximately 38.7% and 52.4%, respectively. The economic cost of full manual dismantling is higher than the recovery production line. This recycling system provides a feasible method for recycling spent LFP batteries.