Open Access Conference Proceedings

Currently, the focus of the waste Li-ion battery processing is on better separation of individual material components of the batteries so that this process is as efficient as possible. This step is closely related to the success of the subsequent processing of the individual separated components. The active material (black mass) after separation contains a certain proportion of metals in the form of their compounds and graphite. The paper deals with the possibility of separating a portion of selected metals, such as cobalt and nickel, into a separated fraction of the black mass using magnetic separation. The active material was annealed at 900 °C, whereby some of the metals were converted into a ferromagnetic state. The subsequent leaching converted the soluble salts into solution. A wet magnetic separation method was then used to concentrate the selected metals into the separated fraction. From the process, a mass fraction richer in the content of selected metals, a fraction richer in graphite and, after drying the solution after leaching, a proportion of salts including lithium salts was obtained. The success of the process depends on a number of parameters during leaching of the material and subsequent magnetic separation. This process made it possible to obtain a metal concentrate containing up to 60-70 wt% of cobalt and 2-3 wt% of nickel. The problem is to achieve better separation of individual components from the Li active material. Finding the best way to process waste lithium batteries is important for sustainable electromobility.

Keywords: Lithium batteries, magnetic separation, metals recovery, cobalt, automotive sustainability

© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.