Table Of ContentHydrometallurgical Recycling of
Lithium-Ion Battery Materials
The expanding market share of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), driven by the second-
ary battery and electric vehicle markets, has consequently led to the accumulation
of spent LIBs. This presents a unique business opportunity for recovering and recy-
cling valuable metals from the spent lithium-ion cathode materials. Hydrometallur-
gical Recycling of Lithium-Ion Battery Materials provides a comprehensive review
of the available hydrometallurgical technologies for recycling spent lithium-ion
cathode active materials. The aim of this book is to raise awareness of LIB recy-
cling, provide comprehensive knowledge of hydrometallurgical recycling of lithium
cathode active materials, and promote an environmentally friendlier hydrometal-
lurgical recycling process.
Key Features
• Summarizes current recycling processes, challenges, and perspectives
• Offers a comprehensive review of current commercialized LIB recycling
companies
• Showcases an innovative closed-loop hydrometallurgical recycling process
to recycle lithium cathode materials
• Provides detailed modeling and economic analyses of several hydrometal-
lurgical recycling processes
• Features practical cases and data developed by the authors
Offering the most up-to-date information on LIB material recycling, this book is
aimed at researchers and professionals in materials, chemical, electrical, and me-
chanical engineering, as well as chemists working on battery technologies.
Electrochemical Energy Storage and Conversion
Series Editor Jiujun Zhang, National Research Council Institute for Fuel Cell
Innovation, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide: Fundamentals and Technologies
Jinli Qiao, Yuyu Liu, and Jiujun Zhang
Metal–Air and Metal–Sulfur Batteries: Fundamentals and Applications
Vladimir Neburchilov and Jiujun Zhang
Photochemical Water Splitting: Materials and Applications
Neelu Chouhan, Ru-Shi Liu, and Jiujun Zhang
Electrochemical Supercapacitors for Energy Storage and Delivery: Fundamentals
and Applications
Aiping Yu, Victor Chabot, Jiujun Zhang
Electrochemical Polymer Electrolyte Membranes
Jianhua Fang, Jinli Qiao, David P. Wilkinson, and Jiujun Zhang
Electrochemical Energy: Advanced Materials and Technologies
Pei Kang Shen, Chao-Yang Wang, San Ping Jiang, Xueliang Sun, and Jiujun Zhang
High-Temperature Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage: Fundamentals
and Applications
Yixiang Shi, Ningsheng Cai, Tianyu Cao, and Jiujun Zhang
Redox Flow Batteries: Fundamentals and Applications
Huamin Zhang, Xianfeng Li, and Jiujun Zhang
Carbon Nanomaterials for Electrochemical Energy Technologies: Fundamentals
and Applications
Shuhui Sun, Xueliang Sun, Zhongwei Chen, Yuyu Liu, David P. Wilkinson, and
Jiujun Zhang
Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells
Zhigang Qi
Hydrothermal Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Low-Carbon Fuels
Fangming Jin
Lithium-Ion Supercapacitors: Fundamentals and Energy Applications
Lei Zhang, David P. Wilkinson, Zhongwei Chen, and Jiujun Zhang
Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: From Fundamental Principles to Complete Systems
Radenka Maric and Gholamreza Mirshekari
Hydrometallurgical Recycling of Lithium-Ion Battery Materials
Joey Jung, Pang-Chieh Sui, and Jiujun Zhang
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
Electrochemical-Energy-Storage-and-Conversion/book-series/CRCELEENESTO
Hydrometallurgical
Recycling of Lithium-Ion
Battery Materials
Joey Jung, Pang-Chieh Sui, and Jiujun Zhang
First edition published 2023
by CRC Press
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and by CRC Press
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CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
© 2023 Joey Jung, Pang-Chieh Sui, and Jiujun Zhang
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and pub-
lisher cannot assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use.
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ISBN: 978-1-032-21602-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-21609-6 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-26920-5 (ebk)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003269205
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by KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.
Contents
Preface......................................................................................................................vii
Authors ......................................................................................................................ix
Chapter 1 Hydrometallurgical Recycling of Lithium-Ion Battery
Cathode Material ..................................................................................1
Joey Jung and Jiujun Zhang
Chapter 2 Current Commercial Hydrometallurgical Recycling Process ............39
Joey Jung and Jiujun Zhang
Chapter 3 RecycLiCoTM Recycling Process for Lithium-Ion Battery
Cathode Active Materials ...................................................................75
Joey Jung
Chapter 4 Closed-Loop Hydrometallurgical Processing Using LiOH for
Coprecipitation and Electrodialysis for LiOH Regeneration ...........109
Joey Jung and Jiujun Zhang
Chapter 5 Analysis of Mass Balance, Energy Consumption, and
Economics of the Closed-Loop Hydrometallurgical Recycling
Waste/Spent Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Active Materials ..........147
Joey Jung and Jiujun Zhang
Chapter 6 Modeling and Simulation on the Recycling Process of Spent
Lithium-Ion Battery Cathode Materials ...........................................167
Pang-Chieh Sui
Chapter 7 Prospective Life Cycle Assessment Study of
Hydrometallurgical Recycling Process with RecycLiCo™
Process and Electrodialysis ..............................................................207
Phoebe Whattoff and Jordan Lindsey
Index ......................................................................................................................269
v
Preface
The mass adoption of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), e.g., in electric vehicles, portable
electronics, and stationary energy storage stations, has sparked an enormous demand
for battery materials, including lithium, cobalt, manganese, nickel, etc. This trend is
causing a risk of LIB materials shortage in sustainable commercialization. With the
rapidly increasing volume of production scrap and decommissioned LIBs, the cur-
rent raw materials for manufacturing LIB materials are gradually becoming scarce,
and their prices have risen sharply. In addition to the sustainability issue of available
LIBs materials, the environmental impact of the spent and discarded LIBs has also
become a serious concern. For these reasons, recycling LIB materials using environ-
mentally friendly methods is essential to regenerate new lithium materials from the
spent LIBs for reuse.
This book aims three-fold: to raise awareness of spent LIBs recycling, to provide
comprehensive knowledge of hydrometallurgical recycling, and to promote an envi-
ronmentally friendly recycling process. This book gives an overview of the hydromet-
allurgical recycling of LIB materials with scientific and technological fundamentals,
the current state of technology of recycling processes, technical challenges, and per-
spectives. Furthermore, this book also showcases an innovative and environmentally
friendly closed-loop hydrometallurgical recycling process to recycle lithium cathode
materials with detailed modeling, economic analysis, and life cycle assessment.
We believe this book will be a resource benefiting researchers, students, and
industrial professionals by providing an overview of the materials, system design,
and related issues for the development of the LIB recycling process. The information
in this book will be beneficial for readers in selecting existing materials/technologies
and developing new materials/technologies.
We would like to express our appreciation to Dr. Marcus Tomlinson from
Turnstone Metallurgical Services for providing METSIM simulation data on the
processes, Ms. Phoebe Whattoff and Mr. Jordan Lindsay from Minviro Ltd. for pro-
viding a life cycle assessment of the recycling process, and Allison Shatkin from
Taylor & Francis for her guidance and support in smoothing this book preparation
process.
If there are any technical errors in this book, we would sincerely appreciate the
reader’s constructive comments for further improvement.
Joey Jung
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Pang-Chieh Sui
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Jiujun Zhang
Richmond, British Columbia, Canada
September 13, 2022
vii
Authors
Dr. Joey Jung is the Vice President Operations of Kemetco
Research Inc. and co-founder and treasurer of the
International Academy of Electrochemical Energy Science
(IAOEES). Dr. Jung was appointed as the Director of
Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Research Center at the Institute for
Sustainable Energy, Shanghai University from 2018 to 2022.
Dr. Jung has more than 20 years of R&D experience in the
subject areas of fuel cell catalysts, fuel cell gas diffusion lay-
ers, high surface area carbon foam and carbon paper, lead-
acid batteries, lithium-ion batteries, metal-air batteries,
electroplating/electrowinning, electroreduction of carbon dioxide, lithium extraction
and processing, and lithium-ion battery recycling. Dr. Jung has edited and co-
authored two books, three book chapters, over 20 publications, and more than 20
US/EU/JP/CA/CN patents, and he has been involved in over 130 industrial projects.
Dr. Jung coedited the book Lead-Acid Battery Technologies: Fundamentals,
Materials, and Applications, published in 2015 by CRC Press.
Professor Pang-Chieh Sui currently holds dual appoint-
ments at the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT, from
2016) and Tsinghua-Sichuan Energy Internet Research
Institute (EIRI, 2018). Before joining the WUT/EIRI, he was
a Senior Researcher and Tech Lab Manager of the Institute
for Integrated Energy Systems, University of Victoria
(Canada) during 2003–2015, and a Research Scientist at the
National Advanced Driving Simulator (USA) during 1997–
2003. Prof. Sui received a Bachelor’s degree from National
Tsing Hua University (Taiwan) in 1986 and an MS and a
Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, USA, in 1992 and 1997, respectively. He is a recipi-
ent of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Fellowship of Germany (2015), the 6th Hubei
National Telent Plan Award (2016), the Sichuan-1000 Plan (2019), and the Overseas,
Hong Kong & Macao Scholars Collaborated Researching Fund of China (2014).
Professor Jiujun Zhang is the Dean of Fuzhou University
College of Materials Sciences and Engineering and Dean
of Shanghai University Institute for Sustainable Energy/
College of Sciences. He is a former Principal Research
Officer at the National Research Council of Canada (NRC),
Fellow of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of
Canada (FRSC-CA), Fellow of the International Society of
Electrochemistry (FISE), Fellow of the Engineering Institute
of Canada (FEIC), Fellow of the Canadian Academy of
ix
