Closed Loop Recycling of Electric Vehicle Batteries to Enable Ultra-high Quality Cathode Powder

Chen, Mengyuan; Zheng, Zhangfeng; Wang, Qiang; Zhang, Yubin; Ma, Xiaotu; Shen, Chao; Xu, Dapeng; Liu, Jin; Liu, Yangtao; Gionet, Paul; O’Connor, Ian; Pinnell, Leslie; Wang, Jun; Gratz, Eric; Arsenault, Renata; Wang, Yan

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-38238-3

Title: Closed Loop Recycling of Electric Vehicle Batteries to Enable Ultra-high Quality Cathode Powder

Journal Article · Thu Feb 07 00:00:00 EST 2019 · Scientific Reports

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-38238-3· OSTI ID:1613992

Chen, Mengyuan ^[1]; Zheng, Zhangfeng ^[1]; Wang, Qiang ^[1]; Zhang, Yubin ^[1]; Ma, Xiaotu ^[1]; Shen, Chao ^[1]; Xu, Dapeng ^[1]; Liu, Jin ^[1]; Liu, Yangtao ^[1]; Gionet, Paul ^[2]; O’Connor, Ian ^[2]; Pinnell, Leslie ^[2]; Wang, Jun ^[2]; Gratz, Eric ^[3]; Arsenault, Renata ^[4]; Wang, Yan ^[1]

Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA (United States)
A123 Systems, Waltham, MA (United States)
Battery Resourcers, Worcester, MA (United States)
Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, MI (United States)

The lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling market is becoming increasingly important because of the widespread use of LIBs in every aspect of our lives. Mobile devices and electric cars represent the largest application areas for LIBs. Vigorous innovation in these sectors is spurring continuous deployment of LIB powered devices, and consequently more and more LIBs will become waste as they approach end of life. Considering the significant economic and environmental impacts, recycling is not only necessary, but also urgent. The WPI group has successfully developed a closed-loop recycling process, and has previously demonstrated it on a relatively small scale 1 kg spent batteries per experiment. Here, we show that the closed-loop recycling process can be successfully scaled up to 30 kg of spent LIBs from electric vehicle recycling streams, and the recovered cathode powder shows similar (or better) performance to equivalent commercial powder when evaluated in both coin cells and single layer pouch cells. All of these results demonstrate the closed-loop recycling process has great adaptability and can be further developed into industrial scale.

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Research Organization:: United States Advanced Batter Consortium, LLC, Southfield, MI (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)

Grant/Contract Number:: EE0006250

OSTI ID:: 1613992

Journal Information:: Scientific Reports, Vol. 9, Issue 1; ISSN 2045-2322

Publisher:: Nature Publishing GroupCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 60 works

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Recycling of mixed cathode lithium‐ion batteries for electric vehicles: Current status and future outlook Or, Tyler; Gourley, Storm W. D.; Kaliyappan, Karthikeyan Carbon Energy, Vol. 2, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1002/cey2.29	journal	March 2020

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