Green hydrometallurgical route for recycling process of NCA cathode scrap

Abstract

A green recycling process of Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminium Oxide (NCA) cathode scrap was purposed. Citric acid (C6H8O7) and ascorbic acid (C6H8O6) were used as leaching agent and reductant, respectively. The leaching process was employed at temperature of 90°C, concentration of 1.5 M citric acid and solid to liquid ratio (S/L) of 100 g/L. The effect of leaching time and reductant concentration were investigated. Oxalic co-precipitation and sintering process were applied in order to re-obtain NCA material. The result shows that the highest leaching efficiency obtained by the reductant concentration of 5 %w/v for 4 h. In this study, the re-synthesis of NCA cathode material from cathode scrap was succeed based on the well indexed XRD patterns of obtained NCA to the JCPDS Card #87-1562. The electrochemical performance was analysed using cylindrical full cell with graphite as the counter anode.