Recycling of Electrode Materials from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

In this paper, based on the structure of lithium-ion batteries, the electrode materials were separated from spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) with aim to recycle all valuable components as possible. The spent LIBs were dismantled first, then the mechanical pulverization and sieving process was adopted in the separation of anodes, and dissolution method was used to partition active components from cathodes. Owing to low bonding force between graphite carbon particles and copper foil, graphite carbon can easily drop off and be separated when anode materials were struck. The results showed that after shredding and sieving, most copper was concentrated in the size range above 0.30 mm at the condition of 3 min pulverization, which led to a favorite recovery rate for copper, reaching 95.9%. The selected organic solvent N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) could be successfully applied to dissolve the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) adhesive that the cathode active materials LiCoO₂ be effectively separated from the aluminum current collector.