Recycling and Upcycling Spent LIB Cathodes: A Comprehensive Review

Nianji Zhang; Zhixiao Xu; Wenjing Deng; Xiaolei Wang

doi:10.1007/s41918-022-00154-6

Electrochemical Energy Reviews ›› 2022, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (Suppl 1) DOI: 10.1007/s41918-022-00154-6

Review Article

Recycling and Upcycling Spent LIB Cathodes: A Comprehensive Review

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¹Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering, University of Alberta, T6G 1H9, Edmonton, AB, Canada

^d xiaolei.wang@ualberta.ca

Nianji Zhang

is pursuing his M.Sc. degree under Dr. Xiaolei Wang’s supervision at the University of Alberta. He received his B.Sc. in 2020 from the Southern University of Science and Technology. Currently, he is mainly focusing on the recycling and upcycling electrode materials from spent lithium-ion and alkaline batteries.

Zhixiao Xu

is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Xiaolei Wang. He received his B.S. degree from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology (2013) and M.Sc. degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2016). His current research mainly involves the design of new energy materials and development of novel battery technologies beyond lithium-ion batteries.

Wenjing Deng

is pursuing her Ph.D. degree at the University of Alberta under the supervision of Dr. Xiaolei Wang. She obtained her B.S. degree (2017) and M.Sc. degree (2019) from the Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Case Western Reserve University through a 3+2 undergraduate-graduate joint program. She is now working on the development of high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries.

Xiaolei Wang

is a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Alberta (UofA), and runs his Nano For Advanced Clean Energy (NanoFACE) laboratory in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering. Before joining UofA, he worked as a tenure-track assistant professor at Concordia University from 2017 to 2019, and a postdoctoral fellow researcher at the University of Waterloo from 2014 to 2017. Dr. Wang received his Ph.D. degree in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA, 2013), M.Sc. degree in Chemical Engineering at Tianjin University (TJU, 2007), and B.Sc. degree in Polymer Chemical Engineering at the Dalian University of Technology (DUT, 2004). His research mainly focuses on the rational design, development and application of novel nanostructured materials for energy-related technologies including lithium-ion batteries, sodium-ion batteries, lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, metal-air batteries, supercapacitors, and electrocatalytic systems.

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Abstract

Worldwide demands for green energy have driven the ever-growing popularity of electric vehicles, resulting in demands for a million tons of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Such exigency will not only outstrip the current reserves of critical metals, such as Li, Co, Ni, and Mn, which are essential for LIB fabrication, but also necessitate the methods to properly, safely, and sustainably handle spent LIBs. Current LIB recycling infrastructure uses pyrometallurgical or hydrometallurgical methods and mainly focuses on cobalt recovery to maximize economic benefits. Despite being commercialized, these two methods are either energy-intensive or highly complicated, and their long-term economic feasibility is still uncertain, as the market trend is shifting towards cobalt-poor or even cobalt-free chemistry. Alternative non-destructive methods, including direct recycling and upcycling, have attracted much interest. Direct recycling, which is a non-destructive method, allows spent cathodes to be directly regenerated into new active materials for reuse, while upcycling, as an upgraded direct recycling method, transforms degraded cathode materials into materials with a better performance or applicability in other fields. This review mainly focuses on recent advances in techniques including pyro- and hydrometallurgy, direct recycling, and upcycling.

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Nianji Zhang, Zhixiao Xu, Wenjing Deng, Xiaolei Wang. Recycling and Upcycling Spent LIB Cathodes: A Comprehensive Review. Electrochemical Energy Reviews, 2022, 5(Suppl 1): DOI:10.1007/s41918-022-00154-6