Resource Recovery from Lithium-Ion Batteries with Macromolecules

Batteries represent a future growth area for energy storage, with lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) continuously and most rapidly growing due to their targeted use in electronic vehicles (EVs). It calls for efforts to develop strategies for the reuse, recycling, and recovery of batteries to avoid the build-up of waste in landfills since even the most long-lived EV battery has a limited lifetime of up to 20-years, including their reuse for 2nd lifetime. At the same time, it is well established that the most frequently used functional elements, <i>i.e</i>., metals and natural graphite, are limited. Global geological exploration predicts that a shortage of the relevant elements may occur within 25 years, and some are listed as critical raw materials for the EU. Resource-efficient recycling strategies are therefore required, which allow for continuous raw material supply in the future. This represents a cornerstone for the sustainable battery market. Macromolecules, such as cellulose, are potential candidates for recovery of relevance in recycling LiBs due to their remarkable adsorption capacities, low toxicity, and being environmentally sustainable. In addition, modification of the size, morphology, and surface of cellulose and protein with functional molecules can reach to recover various metals. Therefore, a mild but efficient process was used in this study to extract and recover valuable metals from spent LiBs with macromolecules. Our proposed leaching method shortened the extraction time (more than 50%). It also improved the leached percentage of valuable metal elements with fewer chemicals. The proposed metal recovery process with macromolecules shortened the precipitation time of relevant metal ions from the leachate. Overall, it is shown that recovery of the LiBs can be facilitated and carried out in a more selective and energy-efficient manner using our proposed soft method.