Work

Influence of pre-treatment of black mass from spent electric vehicle batteries on lithium recovery

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Selectively leaching Lithium (Li) from Black mass (BM) in early stages can enhance the overall recovery of metals from spent electric vehicle (EV) lithium ion batteries (LIBs) compared to traditional processes which recover Li in the last steps. Recently water leaching coupled with heat treatment has been gaining interest but leaching conditions become specific to certain types of pre-treatment done. In this work, a process was developed to selectively leach and precipitate Li from differently pre-treated BMs of spent EV LIBs using water leaching. It was observed that pH of BMs in water differ based on their pre-treatment, which becomes dominant during water leaching- thus it is proposed to adjust the pH after addition of the BM in the water. The optimized experimental parameters were 80°C, 30 mins reaction time and pH 10. Li precipitation was carried out from leachates prepared at 20 g/L and 150 g/L where the total evaporation in the former crystallized different phases of Li while the latter based on evaporative concentration precipitated single Li phase with high purity.

Source: Chemical Engineering Journal Advances

DOI: 10.1016/j.ceja.2025.100757

Authors: Usman Saleem, Hammad Farooq, Erik Prasetyo, Christian Rosenkilde, Sulalit Bandyopadhyay

Institution: Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Language: English

Topic: Extraction and Separation Processes

Subfield: Mechanical Engineering

Field: Engineering

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,050