Recovery of valuable metals from cathode materials of spent ternary lithium‐ion battery using natural product as reducing reagent

Abstract In recent years, ternary lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) have been vigorously promoted in the field of new energy vehicles for their excellent overall performance, and the rapid growth of battery production and sales has brought about a proliferation of spent LIBs. The recycling of cathode materials of spent ternary LIBs, which are rich in many valuable metal elements, will bring multiple environmental and economic benefits. In this paper, a systematic study of the key influencing factors in the wet leaching and recycling process was carried out. A natural product tea polyphenol was innovatively used as the reducing reagent, and a sulphuric acid–tea polyphenol leaching system was constructed for the reductive acid leaching of cathode materials of spent ternary LIBs. Under the optimum leaching conditions, the leaching efficiencies of lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese were 99.54%, 98.88%, 99.37%, and 98.45%, respectively. After leaching, a stepwise precipitation method was used to separate and recover the valuable metal ions from the leachate. In summary, an innovatively complete recycling process route for cathode materials of spent ternary LIBs was constructed, which provides a solid theoretical basis and technical support for the efficient and clean recycling of spent LIBs.