Page 85 - EER-2-2

Explora: Environment
and Resource Critical minerals and battery recycling

Figure 3. Commercialized waste battery recycling processes

In the case of the Umicore process, the entire waste the US, the Li-Cycle currently operates a process that puts
battery is melted at 1,450°C in a furnace without any battery packs into a shredder without pretreatment and
additional pretreatment. Copper, cobalt, iron, and nickel sprays a neutralizing solution during the process to control
are recovered in the form of alloys, whereas lithium, fire and explosion. 34,35 Sebitchem, a recycling company in
aluminum, and silicon are separated into slag and sold as Korea, is making a black mass using a similar process, and
construction aggregates. The alloys are atomized into a energy materials are solving fire and explosion problems
18
fine powder, dissolved in hydrochloric acid, and made into using a low-temperature cooling method.
metal compounds through a separation and purification
process, which are then sold as battery precursor. Electric Cycle-Well in China are developing a process to
vehicle waste batteries, which weigh 500 kg and are large selectively leach lithium and increase the lithium
in size, must be disassembled into modules before being recovery rates. In addition, Ascend Elements in the US
fed in. There are problems such as the large amount of are developing a direct metal hydroxide co-precipitation
carbon dioxide generated during the melting process and method that omits the solvent extraction process to
the difficulty of recovering lithium, which has skyrocketed increase competitiveness. The direct recycling method
in price. Therefore, research into lithium recovery during developed by the Argonne National Laboratory in the
melting is currently being conducted in Korea. 27 US is a process that separates cathode scrap, washes, and
removes only impurities, supplements the missing metals,
In Chinese and Korean recycling companies, electric 36
vehicle battery packs are dismantled after electric and heat-treats them to make cathodes again. These new
discharge, disassembled into modules, and crushed and recycling methods are expected to be more economical
pulverized to a create black mass, which is the raw material than existing methods due to their simpler manufacturing
for the leaching process. The black mass was dissolved processes; however, they must overcome the hurdle
28
in sulfuric acid and converted into metal compounds of an independent product manufacturing process for
through a solvent extraction process. To recycle electric commercialization.
vehicle batteries, which contain a large amount of energy The following are important factors for commercializing
and are composed of hundreds of kilograms of cells, fire the battery recycling process: (1) securing raw materials,
and explosion problems must be solved. In addition, (2) controlling fire and explosion problems, and
many problems need to be solved, such as metal recovery (3) establishing a separation and purification process to
rate, improvement of leaching processes, and wastewater produce products that can be used as raw materials for
treatment; therefore, new recycling processes are still being batteries. In addition, to ensure economic feasibility, five
developed. 29-32 items must be considered: (1) metal content in raw materials,

In Duesenfeld, Germany, a process was developed to (2) raw material recovery status, (3) recycling scale,
control fire and explosion by blowing nitrogen during the (4) government institutional support, and (5) recycling
shredding process and to recover the electrolyte in a black technology. Among these, recycling technology is the most
mass using a reduced-pressure evaporation method. In important.
33

Volume 2 Issue 2 (2025) 4 doi: 10.36922/eer.8140