A new method of recycling lithium-Ion batteries could help meet skyrocketing demand.
Lithium-ion batteries are at the heart of nearly every electric vehicle, laptop and smartphone, and they are essential to storing renewable energy in the face of the climate emergency. But all of the world’s current mining operations cannot extract enough lithium and other key minerals to meet skyrocketing demand for these batteries. Establishing new mines is an expensive, years-long effort.
But new research published in Joule has hit upon what experts describe as a more elegant recycling method that refurbishes the cathode—the carefully crafted crystal that is the lithium-ion battery’s most expensive component and key to supplying the proper voltage. The researchers found that batteries they made with their new cathode-recycling technique perform just as well as those with a cathode made from scratch. In fact, batteries with the recycled cathode both last longer and charge faster.
When a lithium-ion battery is providing power, a cluster of lithium ions moves from one crystalline “cage” to another . The most common methods currently used to recycle these batteries involve dismantling and shredding the whole battery, then either melting it all down or dissolving it in acid. The result is a black mass—with a texture can that can vary from powder to goo—from which chemical elements or simple compounds can be salvaged.
Because a cathode is crafted from a precise mix of precious minerals to achieve the battery’s specific voltage, slight changes to its structure or composition can compromise its performance. Thus, much of the cathode powder’s value is “in how you’ve engineered the particles [of powder] in the first place,” says Emma Kendrick, a professor of energy materials at England’s University of Birmingham, who was not involved in the new study.
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