A green and facile approach for regeneration of graphite from spent lithium ion battery

Low-cost regeneration of graphite from spent lithium ion batteries (LIBs) enjoys great significance in solving the problems of utilization and pollution of spent graphite. In this study, a facile approach for recycling graphite from spent LIBs has been developed. Firstly, anode current collector is smelted under nitrogen atmosphere at 1673 K for 4 h. Then, copper and graphite are further separated from each other by simple ultrasonic vibration and sieving. The results show that more than 80% copper above the 200-mesh (0.075 mm) and 77.53% graphite under the 300-mesh (0.048 mm) can be recovered, and the purity of the recovered graphite is higher than 99.5%. The recycled graphite shows high capacity and good cycle performance (specific capacity can be high up to 360.8 mA h g−1 after 100 cycles at 1C and the retention rate is almost 100%).