Using glycine to recover valuable metals from lithium-ion batteries

TL;DR

This paper presents a new eco-friendly method to recover valuable metals like cobalt and lithium from lithium-ion batteries using glycine.

Contribution

A novel, environmentally-friendly process for leaching and recovering metals from LIBs using glycine and selective precipitation.

Findings

Glycine effectively dissolves cobalt, lithium, manganese, and nickel from LIBs.

Selective precipitation using oxalic acid, soda, and ammonia successfully recovers nickel, manganese, cobalt, and lithium.

ICP, XRD, and FESEM analyses confirmed the composition and effectiveness of the recovery process.

Abstract

In recent years, with the increasing use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), recycling their valuable metals has become very important not only from an environmental but also from an economic perspective. In this study, an effective and environmentally-friendly approach was proposed for leaching cobalt and lithium from LIBs by using glycine. Accordingly, after the initial preparation of lithium-ion batteries, in the first stage, the dissolution of the metals manganese, cobalt, nickel, and lithium in a glycine solution (1 M glycine concentration, 60 min, and 60 °C) was carried out. After investigating several effective parameters, different metals were precipitated from the solution in several stages. Using oxalic acid at pH = 2, nickel oxalate (NiC2O4) was precipitated from a glycine solution. Then, by increasing the pH to the alkaline range (about 8) with soda and ammonia, manganese and cobalt hydroxides were precipitated. Finally, by adding sodium carbonate, lithium carbonate was obtained. At each stage, the composition of the precipitate and the solution contents were determined by ICP, XRD, and FESEM analyses.

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