Doctoral candidate Tobias Wesselborg from LUT University has investigated the hydrometallurgical recovery of valuable key components such as lithium, nickel and cobalt from used lithium-ion batteries. Especially lithium recovery is currently minimal, creating an urgent need for new solutions.
Lithium-ion batteries are widely present in everyday life in, for example, electric vehicles and smart phones. The demand for batteries is expected to surge along with growing electrification, which may lead to a shortage of critical metal components. Today, the European Union relies heavily on third countries in the lithium-ion battery value chain.
“Improving domestic recycling and metal recovery from spent lithium-ion batteries is crucial to reduce dependency on external sources, Lithium-ion batteries have a short lifespan and are a potential secondary raw material. Moreover, the recycling of used batteries prevents environmental pollution,” underlines Wesselborg.
Novel processes provide high recovery yields
In his dissertation, Wesselborg developed two novel alternative processing routes based on hydrometallurgy, which involves the use of aqueous solutions for the recovery of metals. The study examined two hydrometallurgical processes: solvent extraction and ion exchange.
The genius of the solvent extraction system lies in the direct extraction of lithium from lithium-ion battery waste leachate, guaranteeing high recovery yields. The process allows for the selective extraction of lithium from multimetal leachate prior to the recovery of any other metal. This is a distinct advantage over standard processes in which lithium is recovered last or not at all.
Today, impurities such as aluminium, iron, copper and manganese are often removed from the waste leachate via precipitation. However, this process can also cause unwanted co-precipitation of valuable lithium, nickel and cobalt, which leads to low recovery yields. The continuous ion exchange process was thus developed to selectively remove such impurities and to recover a high-purity solution containing lithium, nickel and cobalt while maintaining very high recovery yields.
Overall, Wesselborg’s dissertation is of great interest to battery producers and recycling companies, who strive to increase material recycling and secure a sustainable raw material supply in the future. It gives insights into the application of hydrometallurgical ion exchange in multicolumn configurations, which is also of interest to the metal refining industry in general.
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Tobias Wesselborg
Tobias Wesselborg will defend his dissertation on LUT University’s Lappeenranta campus on Monday 20 January 2025.
