Abstract With the environmental pollution and shortage of resources, the recycling and reusing of spent lithium-ion batteries become crucial. However, the complexity of recycling methods, associated with high cost, makes… Click to show full abstract
Abstract With the environmental pollution and shortage of resources, the recycling and reusing of spent lithium-ion batteries become crucial. However, the complexity of recycling methods, associated with high cost, makes their recovery difficult. Herein, an effective and clean process to recycle anode materials from lithium-ion batteries and reuse graphite is proposed in this work. The graphite and copper foil of the anode are separated by electrolysis method, and the effects of parameters (voltages, inter-electrode distance, and electrolyte concentration) on the electrolysis process are investigated. The copper foil can be directly reused without further treatment, Cu2+ and Li+ in the electrolyte can be recovered by precipitation method. The purity of recovered graphite is about 95%, and the graphite can be reused to prepare the anode materials for lithium-ion batteries that exhibit excellent cycling stability and rate capability. The first discharge and charge specific capacities at a rate of 0.1 C are 427.81 mA h g−1 and 350.47 mA h g−1, respectively. The coulombic efficiency after the second cycle is observed to be about 98%.
               
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