The present disclosure relates to a process for recycling energy storage devices, and more particularly, to a process for reclaiming the valuable materials of one or more lithium-ion battery cells.
The ever-increasing energy requirements of portable electronic devices, such as personal computing devices and electric or hybrid automobiles, have been a driving force behind the development of battery technology in the modern era. State-of-the-art electronic devices place significant demands on batteries both in output as well as weight, requiring substantial current delivery while being lightweight and compact enough to avoid hindering the portability of the host device.
While rechargeable nickel-based batteries (e.g., NiCad and NiMH) had gained popularity, lithium-ion batteries have more recently emerged as the preferred choice for portable electronics equipment and vehicles. Given their vast use both today and into the foreseeable future, once their usable life, or the useable life of the device in which they are utilized, has been reached, the handling of such large quantities of used batteries will pose a significant technical challenge facing the industry.
In general, batteries contain toxic materials that are hazardous to our health and the environment if left in a landfill, in addition to being highly reactive in the case of a lithium-ion battery. Further, numerous components of the battery possess significant value if they can be suitably recovered and reused. If usable materials can be recovered from used batteries, less raw material needs to be extracted from the limited supplies in the ground, and emissions resulting from the systems used to both procure the materials, as well as transport them around the world, will be reduced.
For all of the above reasons, lithium-ion battery recycling appears to be a preferred solution. However, several factors contribute to making lithium-ion battery recycling more complicated compared to recycling processes for other battery types. For instance, lithium-ion batteries have a wider variety of materials in each cell. The active materials used in each cell, for example, typically take the form of a powder coated onto a metallic foil collector. These different materials must be separated from one another during recycling efforts.
While several lithium-ion battery recycling methods exist today, known methods thus far include one or more of undesirable results, or complex and/or expensive processing steps. For example, processes have been developed which utilize extreme heat in order to melt all of the valuable metals of the battery into an alloy or a combination of an alloy and a slag material. As a result, recovery of individual materials requires additional complex processing steps. Still other methods include the need to mechanically separate the components of the battery (e.g., manually separate an anode from a cathode) prior to subsequent material recovery processing, which is time and labor intensive, and thus expensive. Still other methods are not environmentally friendly, adding to the complexity of the process, such as those which utilize liquid water or steam, and/or those which result in the production of acidic gases, such as carbonic acid or other organic acids.
Accordingly, there is a need for a battery recycling processes suitable for lithium-ion batteries which is both efficient and environmentally friendly.
According to an embodiment of the present disclosure, a method for recycling a lithium-ion battery includes isolating individual battery cells from a lithium-ion battery pack containing a plurality of cells. One or more isolated cells may be segmented (e.g., mechanically cut), and heated in a dry, inert atmosphere to a temperature below the melting point of its metallic components (e.g., below the melting point of an aluminum foil cathode collector of the cell). After heating, the battery segments are cooled to room temperature or below for inducing interface stress or tension, stress fracturing, and/or cracking between an active cathode material (e.g., lithium oxide) and the cathode collector. Internal tension between the materials and/or fracturing or peeling of the active material from the collector material facilitates a subsequent step of mechanically separating the active material from the surface of the collector material. Once the active material is removed, a second separation step may be performed for separating the cathode collector from the anode collector.
The invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying figures, of which:
Exemplary embodiments of the invention will be described hereinafter in detail with reference to the attached drawings, wherein like reference numerals refer to like elements. The invention may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as being limited to the embodiments set forth herein; rather, these embodiments are provided so that the present disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the concept of the disclosure to those skilled in the art.
The embodiments set forth in detail herein allow for the reclaiming of materials used in the fabrication of lithium-ion based battery cells. Embodiments process battery cells in an efficient and environmentally-friendly manner to recover, for example, lithium-containing cathode material, copper anode electrodes and aluminum cathode electrodes for the purpose of recycling, recovery and/or future reuse.
Referring generally to
In one exemplary configuration, the positive electrode 160 consists of a cathode collector of aluminum foil. An active cathode material, for example lithium mixed metal oxide or lithium cobalt oxide, is coated or otherwise deposited on the aluminum foil collector to form the positive electrode 160. A polymeric binder adhesive may be used to facilitate the attachment of the cathode material to the aluminum foil. Likewise, the negative electrode 180 may include an anode collector of copper foil, for example, with an anode material of carbon or graphite deposited or coated thereon. The separator 190 may comprise a thin sheet of plastic or other polymer, and is used to separate the positive electrode 160 and the negative electrode 180. The separator 190 may be perforated, allowing for the passage of ions therethrough during battery operation.
A recycling process according to embodiments of the present disclosure enables the removal and reclamation of the valuable active cathode material, while avoiding any unnecessary contamination thereof which would necessitate additional subsequent processing. Recovery of the respective cathode and anode collector materials is also enabled, as set forth in greater detail herein.
An exemplary recycling process according to embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in the context of a system useful for performing the same. Specifically,
Referring again to
In a subsequent step, the resulting battery cell segments are subject to a pyrolysis operation, whereby they are heated 230 by a high temperature reactor or furnace 330 (e.g., an electrical or chemical reactor). In order to enable the recovery of the metallic components of the battery in their current states, the temperature of the reactor 330 is established so as not to exceed the melting point of aluminum (i.e., less than 1,221° F. or 660° C.), and is preferably around 600 to 650° C. While the integrity of each of the desirable battery components is maintained at these temperatures, they have been found to be sufficient to degrade the typical adhesives used for securing the cathode material to the aluminum foil collector.
An interior of the reactor 330 may be supplied with an inert gas (e.g., nitrogen, argon or helium), for maintaining an inert atmosphere during the heating process. The inert atmosphere ensures that the cathode active material is maintained in a chemically unaltered physical state. The combustion or oxidation process chemistries are maintained at a minimum, thereby minimizing exothermic heat and unfavorable process temperature. Beyond amounts occurring naturally in the atmosphere, it is particularly critical that no steam, water or other contaminants be introduced into the reactor atmosphere during pyrolysis, thereby avoiding the creation of acidic gases as occurring in prior-art methods.
Upon exiting the reactor 330, the battery segments are cooled 240 in a controlled fashion to at least room temperature. This cooling operation may take place gradually in an open space with ambient atmospheric conditions, or may be enhanced by a supplemental cooling system including a cooling chamber 340. By controlling the rate at which the battery segments are cooled, the physical properties of the segments may be affected in a manner so as to improve the recycling process. Specifically, due to, for example, differing coefficients of thermal expansion of the battery materials, the heating and subsequent cooling steps 230, 240 are configured to introduce interface or interfacial stress between materials, and particularly between the active material and the cathode collector. These stresses may introduce defects between materials, such as fracture sites, or even result in the physical separation (e.g., peeling) of the active material from the collector material. For example,
Referring again to
Beneficially, processing according to the embodiments of the present disclosure does not separate the graphite or carbon active material coating on the anode collector copper foil. With the graphite or carbon remaining on the anode collector, the copper foil is protected from the fields generated during eddy current separation. Accordingly, an advantage presented by the disclosed embodiments includes enabling the use of existing eddy current separation technologies to separate the aluminum cathode collector from the copper anode collector.
The remaining adjoined cathode and anode collector pieces are then placed in a pyrolysis reactor and heated 540 to approximately 600-650° C. in an inert gas atmosphere of nitrogen (N2), by way of example. In one exemplary process, the electrodes are exposed to a flowing nitrogen environment of approximately 150-170 standard cubic centimeter per minute (SCCM) during the heating process. In one particularly beneficial embodiment, the material is processed at 163 SCCM with N2 gas at 643° C. for approximately 45 minutes. The pyrolyzed electrodes are then cooled to at least room temperature, after which they are subject to a mechanical separation process, for example, shaking 545 in order to free active cathode material in particle form from the collector foil. Recovered active cathode material may be subject to further processing for future reuse. The remaining cathode collector foil and attached anode collector foil are subject to further separation processing 550, such as being placed in an eddy current separator, by way of example only. The resulting separated aluminum foil and copper foil/carbon material may also be recycled.
It should be understood that embodiments of the present disclosure beneficially do not require manual or physical separation of the anode collector foil from the cathode collector foil prior to the recovery of the active cathode material. As the anodes and cathodes are designed to be in close proximity of each other within a cell, a process suitable for use at large scale must handle both the anode and cathode simultaneously without an expensive initial separation. The above-described process presents a unique approach using pyrolysis of materials as a method of separating materials that here to for have presented as difficult to separate.
Equally important, the processes according to embodiments of the present disclosure are conducted in an inert, environmentally benign and dry environment. This adds value, as fewer waste products need to be addressed and recycling cost can be minimized. The process avoids the use of liquid water, steam or super-heated steam at great environmental advantage. The process also avoids the use of acidic gases, such as carbonic acid or other weak organic acids, or the manufacture of acidic gases in-situ, such as carbon dioxide in an aqueous atmosphere. The presence of these acids increase the complexity of the process, add to the overall cost of the process and increase the environmental foot-print.
The foregoing illustrates some of the possibilities for practicing the invention. Many other embodiments are possible within the scope and spirit of the invention. It is, therefore, intended that the foregoing description be regarded as illustrative rather than limiting, and that the scope of the invention is given by the appended claims together with their full range.
Also, the indefinite articles “a” and “an” preceding an element or component of the invention are intended to be nonrestrictive regarding the number of instances, that is, occurrences of the element or component. Therefore “a” or “an” should be read to include one or at least one, and the singular word form of the element or component also includes the plural unless the number is obviously meant to be singular.
The term “invention” or “present invention” as used herein is a non-limiting term and is not intended to refer to any single embodiment of the particular invention but encompasses all possible embodiments as described in the application.
This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119 to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 63/024,896, filed May 14, 2020.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63024896 | May 2020 | US |