US team recovers 99,79% pure lithium from spent EV batteries in major breakthrough
Researchers also created a safe and scalable method for recycling highly reactive lithium-metal anodes.
Researchers are tackling key challenges in battery technology by focusing on both the beginning and end of a battery’s life cycle.
A group from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts has improved battery performance and introduced a sustainable recycling method.
Led by Professor Yan Wang, the team focused on improving solid-state batteries. These batteries are considered a safer and more stable replacement for conventional lithium-ion batteries.
Iron-doped material
The newly developed iron-doped material simplifies the design of next-generation solid-state batteries.
It addresses a major issue with solid-state batteries: the incompatibility between halide-based solid-state electrolytes and lithium-metal anodes.
This issue is usually solved by adding protective layers, but those layers increase both the cost and complexity of the batteries.
The researchers solved this by doping lithium-indium chloride with iron.
This modification created a material that can make direct, stable contact with lithium-indium anodes, eliminating the need for a costly and complex protective interlayer.
Interestingly, the new material maintained excellent ionic conductivity and showed impressive long-term stability.
Full battery cells using this material were able to complete over 300 charge-discharge cycles while still retaining 80 percent of their initial capacity. This is a key measure of a battery’s longevity.
Furthermore, symmetric cells, which are used to study the stability of the electrolyte itself, operated for more than 500 hours without degradation.
These results are said to be the “first such demonstration in the field” to showcase this kind of long-term stability.
Wang, said:
This work establishes iron doping as an effective strategy to simplify solid-state battery design while enhancing stability and performance,
Researchers also created a safe and scalable method for recycling highly reactive lithium-metal anodes.
Using a “self-driven” aldol condensation reaction with acetone, the research team was able to transform spent lithium anodes into valuable lithium carbonate (Li2CO3).
Notably, the resulting material was extremely pure, reaching 99.79 percent purity, which exceeds the standards for materials used in new batteries.
The researchers proved the real-world feasibility of their recycling process by using the recovered lithium carbonate to produce new cathode materials.
These new cathodes were then tested and found to have electrochemical performance comparable to commercial ones.
The testing showcased that the recycled material is of high quality and can be integrated back into the battery production process.
The development provides a practical way to reduce the reliance on new lithium mining, which in turn helps to lower production costs and speed up the adoption of cleaner energy technologies.
Wang, said:
This method is an effective solution to one of the most pressing challenges in the battery industry,
The author added,
By turning a safety liability into a driving force for recovery, we’ve created a process that is both practical for industry adoption and critical for building a more sustainable energy future
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US team recovers 99,79% pure lithium from spent EV batteries in major breakthrough, source
