Development of innovative supercritical fluid technology for stepwise recycling of organics, electrolyte and electrodes from Li-ion battery waste

The recycling of lithium (Li) ion batteries has been attracting both scientific and industrial interest due to the increasing amount of applications, waste, and security of supplying raw materials to the battery industry. Although several recycling processes were suggested to recover the valuable content of batteries, only pyrolysis and combustion were introduced to remove the organics in the batteries such as polymer binder of the electrode active materials and separator. However, high-temperature processes of batteries generate fluorinated toxic exhaust gas emissions. The project aims to investigate and develop of a novel supercritical (Sc) fluid process technology for the separation of organic and organometallic components as well as extraction of valuable metals from the electrodes of Li-ion batteries. Removal of the organics by Sc-CO2 method leads to the liberation of electroactive materials, facilitates the following current collector separation and superior metal extraction from electrodes.