Resynthesizing LiFePO4/C materials from the recycled cathode via a green full-solid route

To recycle valuable resource and reduce environmental pollution, a green full-solid route is designed to resynthesize LiFePO4/C materials from spent lithium-ion batteries for the first time. With this full-solid route, a simple thermal treatment process is employed to purify and homogenize the recycled cathode materials. No waste acid or alkaline liquid is used, which can avoid the secondary environment pollution. Further, the effect of Li2CO3 content on the performances of regenerated LiFePO4/C materials is investigated in detail and LiFePO4/C materials with high purity and high tap density are resynthesized. Among these resynthesized LiFePO4/C materials, the one with Li2CO3 addition amount of 1.4 wt% displays excellent physical, chemical and electrochemical performances in half cell and full cell, meeting the reuse requirement for Li-ion batteries. These results indicate that this green full-solid route with simple-operation, easily large-scale preparation, low-cost and high added-value is a feasible and promising way to recycle scrapped cathodes and reuse them.