REcycling of low Value components using high purity pre-treatment, dIrecT recycling And green hydrometallurgical approaches for recycling of Lithium Ion and Sodium Ion BatteriEs

Project Information

REVITALISE

Grant agreement ID: 101137585

DOI

10.3030/101137585

Project closed

EC signature date 11 December 2023

Start date 1 November 2023

End date 31 October 2026

Funded under

• Climate, Energy and Mobility

Total cost

€ 3 945 166,25

EU contribution

€ 3 945 166,25

Coordinated by

NORGES TEKNISK-NATURVITENSKAPELIGE UNIVERSITET NTNU
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - REVITALISE (REcycling of low Value components using high purity pre-treatment, dIrecT recycling And green hydrometallurgical approaches for recycling of Lithium Ion and Sodium Ion BatteriEs)

Reporting period: 2023-11-01 to 2025-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Increased use of Lithium-Ion Batteries(LiBs) coupled with a growing demand for their self-sufficient production in EU is a precedent to increasing end of-life streams containing valuable raw materials. Current recycling processes are commercially impractical due to fast evolving LIB chemistries.

REVITALISE aims to deliver a holistic solution for green, low-cost, and low environmental impact recycling of NMC (High-Ni), LFP and Na-Ion batteries representing 85% of battery waste streams up to 2025. It will recover a full range of battery materials, including NMC, LFP, Al, Cu, Li, graphite, fluorides, phosphates and plastics by focusing on innovative pre-treatment, direct recycling and hydrometallurgy based resource recovery with specific focus on water remediation.

Pre-treatment innovation is expected to enable commercial recycling and recovery of low-value parts and direct recycling of cathode and anode active materials. On the other hand, innovations in hydrometallurgical will enable robust processing of different battery chemistries including valorization of waste streams, ultimately producing battery grade materials similar to those from existing supply chains.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The key technologies to be developed in REVITALISE include innovative pre-treatment, direct recycling and hydrometallurgy. The target is that 40% of pre-treated input materials will be suitable for direct recycling and the rest will be fed to hydrometallurgical processing. The pre-treatment targets scrap coating (scraps produced during battery production) and EOL batteries. To produce materials available for direct recycling, clean separation of battery components is warranted through physical separation and delamination, electrohydraulic fragmentation, ultrasonication, magnetic and electrostatic separation techniques, which are being developed and tested.
Battery components targeted in direct recycling test include graphite, NMC, LFP and Na-ion battery cathode. NMC cathodes have been successfully purified through organic leaching and regenerated by relithiation. Prussian white cathode has been successfully purified by ice-stripping process and regenerated by resodiation. Graphite has been successfully regenerated through coating process. Electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction combined with electrochemical characterization confirmed the success in battery component regeneration.
Two hydrometallurgical processes are being developed: mild leaching based process for the recovery of Li and acid leaching based process for total metal recovery. In the former case, water leaching based process has been tested at lab scale leading to 92% pure Li2CO3 with Li recovery rate of 90%. For total recovery, leaching tests with different inorganic acids (HCl, HNO3 and H2SO4) on different black mass chemistries (NMC 111, NMC 622, NMC 901 and LFP) show HCl as the acid of choice for high leaching efficiencies. Further, leaching performance of HCl was not affected by black mass chemistry. This means HCl based process can deal with the black mass cross contamination (black mass mixture). Several organic acids such as acetic, oxalic and citric acids have been tested to recover valuable metals from black mass. In the case of Na-ion battery, several organic and inorganic chemicals have been screened for leaching. All these flowsheets are being currently tested at lab scale, before providing inputs for life cycle analysis, techno-economic analyses and the likes.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Innovative pre-treatment will produce high grade materials which are amenable for direct recycling. Direct recycling further will cut energy and chemical consumption in recycling processes, which is expected to decrease the impact of the recycling processes on the environment and reduce carbon footprints. However, since direct recycling is still far from maturity, future research will still be needed in this field and currently is being complemented by hydrometallurgical processing. The robust hydrometallurgical process to be developed in the project is expected to deal with various battery chemistries including their mixtures, whereby solving challenges with changing battery chemistries as well as cross contamination. This new approach in hydrometallurgical battery recycling needs demonstration in larger (pilot) scale and support in terms of economical evaluation and further commercialization.