Extraction of Nickel from Recycled Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

A series of operations have been developed to separate and recover individual critical metals from the end-of life lithium-ion batteries (LIB) based on their electrochemical and chemical properties. The black mass from waste LIBs contained Ni, Co, Li, and Mn, as well as contaminates such as Al, Fe and Cu. This paper highlights the leaching of metals and the recovery of Ni as part of a comprehensive recovery scheme. The electrochemical leach successfully dissolved over 97% of these metals into leachate and deposited over 98% of Cu onto cathode. The produced leachate was mildly acidic which could be used directly for Ni extraction through ion-exchange. Purity of the Ni-rich product was over 99%, and the precipitated NiSO4 powder possessed a higher Ni purity at 99.8%. Through these operations, we have successfully developed a feasible and flexible approach in recovery of critical materials and high purity metal salts from recycled LIBs.