Recycling of Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Abstract The use of lithium‐ion batteries ( LIB s) has grown since the market entry of portable power tools and consumer electronic devices. Soon, the need for LIB will rise, when they are used in hybrid and full electric vehicles as well as in energy storage systems to enable the use of renewable energies. To prevent a future shortage of cobalt, nickel, and lithium and to enable a sustainable life cycle of these technologies, new recycling processes for LIBs are needed. These new processes have to regain not only cobalt, nickel, copper, and aluminum from spent battery cells but also a significant share of lithium. Therefore, this article approaches unit operations and their combination to set up for efficient LIB recycling processes, especially considering the task to recover high rates of valuable materials with regard to involved safety issues. Further discussed unit operations are Deactivation/discharging of the battery Disassembly of battery systems (specifically for EV‐battery systems ) Mechanical processes (including inert crushing, sorting, and sieving processes and a special case: thermomechanical separation) Hydrometallurgical processes Pyrometallurgical processes Specific dangers are associated with LIB recycling processes: electrical dangers, chemical dangers, burning reactions, and potential interactions of the single dangers. Furthermore, industrial process chains, already in use, as well as research approaches are summarized. The processes of the companies Retriev Technologies , Recupyl , Batrec , Inmetco , Xstrata , Umicore , Accurec , AEA Technology , OnTo T echnology, and Lion Engineering are discussed and illustrated briefly. A closer look is given to some results of the research project LithoRec .