Novel approach to recover cobalt and lithium from spent lithium-ion battery using oxalic acid
Abstract
With the booming of consumer electronics (CE) and electric vehicle (EV), a large number of spent lithium-ion battery (LIBs) have been generated worldwide. Resource depletion and environmental concern driven from the sustainable industry of CE and EV have motivated spent LIBs should be recovered urgently. However, the conventional process combined with leaching, precipitating, and filtering was quite complicated to recover cobalt and lithium from spent LIBs. In this work, we developed a novel recovery process, only combined with oxalic acid leaching and filtering. When the optimal parameters for leaching process is controlled at 150 min retention time, 95 °C heating temperature, 15 g L(-1) solid-liquid ratio, and 400 rpm rotation rate, the recovery rate of lithium and cobalt from spent LIBs can reach about 98% and 97%, respectively. Additionally, we also tentatively discovered the leaching mechanism of lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) using oxalic acid, and the leaching order of the sampling LiCoO2 of spent LIBs. All the obtained results can contribute to a short-cut and high-efficiency process of spent LIBs recycling toward a sound closed-loop cycle.
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Lithium-ion battery manufacturers used cobalt significantly in their older generation of batteries.
“LB manufacturers used cobalt significantly in their older generation of batteries [33].”
From Electric Vehicle Battery Supply Chain and Critical Materials: A Brief Survey of State of the Art (2023) · cites this paper as [33]
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- Authors
- Zeng, X., Li, J., & Shen, B.
- Affiliations
- State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Li, Jinhui
- Venue
- Journal of Hazardous Materials
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-09
- Volume
- 295
- Pages
- 112-118
- ISSN
- 0304-3894 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2064585402
- Cited by
- 571
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 45 · 2025: 69 · 2024: 73 · 2023: 64 · 2022: 56 · 2021: 62 · 2020: 59 · 2019: 58 · 2018: 38 · 2017: 23 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 7
- FWCI
- 27.77
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Hazardous Materials (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Tsinghua University
- Key Technologies Research and Development Program
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Mechanical Engineering › Extraction and Separation Processes
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Waste Management and Disposal › Recycling and Waste Management Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Metal Extraction and Bioleaching
- Keywords
- spent lithium-ion batteries, cobalt recovery, lithium recovery, oxalic acid leaching, battery recycling, LiCoO2, leaching mechanism, electric vehicle batteries, closed-loop recycling
- MeSH terms
- Cobalt, Lithium, Oxalic Acid, Electronic Waste
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