Battery Metals Recycling - An Urban Mining Initiative
Jack Zhang
Manager, Mineral Processing
Director, Rare Earth Element Division
Saskatchewan Research Council
Abstract
The world is experiencing an exponential market growth of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to the drastic increase in demand for electric vehicles (EVs). There were 11,000,000 EVs sold worldwide in 2020 and the Journal of Science estimates there will be at least 145,000,000 EVs sold in 2030. However, the LIBs will eventually reach their end of life (EoL) and the spent batteries must be managed properly to avoid environmental concerns as LIBs contain many components that are toxic, such as metals (Ni, Co, Cu, Li, Al, Mn) and electrolytes that can become environmentally hazardous.
With declining primary resources for battery metals, spent battery recycling will help to close the enlarging gap between demand and supply, while at the same time reducing its environmental footprint. Although some recycling processes exist, it is evident that the current development of green and sustainable LIB recycling processes aren’t enough. The current prometallurgical recycling and shredding/crushing/grinding/hydrometallurgical recycling processes are not only low efficiency in recovering the valuable battery metals with high-energy consumption, but they also produce a significant amount of secondary pollutants, such as waste residues, toxic solution discharges and gaseous emissions.
Different than the current EoL battery recycling processes, SRC’s direct recycling process of LIB metals will minimize chemical conversions and reactions in the process and maximize the recovery of various components directly to its user-end forms. For example, aluminum and cooper will be recovered directly as salable products. Cobalt, nickle and lithium will be recovered at high purity as the battery metal precursors through a green hydrometallurgical process where reagents used will be more selective and their consumption will be minimized. The direct recycling process will produce minimal waste residues.
This presentation will provide an overwiew of the current EoL LIB recycling practice and the new development of LIB metal recovery techologies.
