Useful resource recovery from waste NCM cathode in lithium-ion batteries via electrochemical method

초록

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by burning fossil fuels, interest in electric vehicles (EVs) is rapidly growing rapidly around the world. The demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) for EVs is also expected to double every year, raising the issue of waste battery disposal. Several traditional approaches including pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy to recover useful resources such as transition metals and lithium from spent NCM cathode are complex, require high energy, and emit toxic and corrosive substances. In this research, we investigate how to recover transition metals and lithium from spent NCM cathode via direct electrochemical approach. It successfully demonstrates the peeling of NCM black power from an aluminum current collector by applying a constant voltage within a minutes. In addition, the cause of the successful separation of the NCM cathode from the current collector was studied on the gas evolution reaction and anodization of the aluminum current collector.