Implementation of supercritical CO2 technology for stepwise recycling of electrolyte, organics and electrodes from spent vehicle batteries

The recycling of lithium (Li) ion batteries has been attracting scientific and industrial interest due to the increasing number of applications leading to massive amounts of waste and supply risk of raw materials to the battery industry.

Battery waste-related environmental issues are also significant concerns, and thus countries, specifically the EU, encourages the development of new recycling strategies.

Although several recycling processes were suggested to recover the valuable content of batteries, only pyrolysis and combustion were introduced to remove the organics in the batteries such as polymer binder of the electrode active materials and separator. However, high-temperature processes of batteries generate fluorinated toxic exhaust gas emissions.

Additionally, electrolyte recovery is always out of the recycling scope and lost during the processing.

The project will investigate and develop an innovative supercritical carbon dioxide (Sc-CO2) process technology to recycle electrode, organic components, and electrode materials.

The sequential removal of the electrolyte and organic binders by the Sc-CO2 method leads to the liberation of electroactive materials and their effective separation. The recovered anode and cathode active materials can have sufficient material properties to be re-use in a battery.

Besides, our novel approach facilitates the current collector separation after recycling the organics and superior metal extraction from electrodes.