Metal Recycling from the Cathode of Lithium-Ion Battery in the Aqueous Environment
- DOI
- 10.2991/978-94-6239-668-5_20How to use a DOI?
- Keywords
- Lithium-ion battery; Recycling; NMC cathode; Hydrometallurgy; Precipitation
- Abstract
Lithium-ion battery recycling is crucial for conserving valuable materials, reducing environmental impacts, and ensuring a sustainable supply chain of critical metals for future energy storage technologies. However, establishing methods for selectively separating valuable metals through cost-effective, environmentally friendly processes is necessary to enhance the sustainability and efficiency of lithium-ion battery recycling. In this research, we developed an efficient and cost-effective method for selectively extracting precious, scarce metals—cobalt, manganese, and nickel—from NMC cathode-based batteries using a new combination of precipitation reactions. Firstly, some lithium-ion batteries with NMC cathodes were disassembled, and SEM and EDS were used to analyze a degraded battery to monitor its internal state. Then, two recycling approaches based on hydrometallurgical processes — acid leaching and step-by-step precipitation — were employed. In both methods, Co was removed as a complex with NO2− ions. In other steps of the approaches, Mn and Ni were separated in different orders using NH3 and NaOH as the simplest available precipitants. To characterize the separated batches, SEM, EDS, and XRD results confirmed the compositions. XRD results showed that Li was coprecipitated as a binary oxide with Mn (LiMn2O4, LMO) in the first approach. In the next approach, Li was detected as carbonate in a mixed salt coprecipitate. Additionally, the effect of precipitation resting time on the crystallinity of the batches was investigated. Also, the possibility of managing the unfavorable byproducts, such as NOx gases, in the Co separation step was examined.
- Copyright
- © 2026 The Author(s)
- Open Access
- Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Vahid Noroozicharandabi AU - Davoud Nasr Esfahani PY - 2026 DA - 2026/05/14 TI - Metal Recycling from the Cathode of Lithium-Ion Battery in the Aqueous Environment BT - Proceedings of the International Conference on Current Problems in Engineering and Applied Sciences (ICCPEAS 2025) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 184 EP - 197 SN - 2352-5401 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-668-5_20 DO - 10.2991/978-94-6239-668-5_20 ID - Noroozicharandabi2026 ER -