Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries: Overview of Existing Processes, Analysis and Performance

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have become a widespread technology for electrochemical energy storage in the current era of digitalization and transport electrification, being used as electric stationary storage as well as for powering electric vehicles, e-bikes and portable electronic devices such as smartphones and laptops. However, LIBs contain valuable materials, such as cobalt, nickel, lithium and graphite, whose supply has become critical to meet the increasing demand of batteries. Therefore, proper recycling processes are required in order to recover these materials from spent batteries and re-use them to produce new batteries in a sustainable cycle. This contribution provides an extensive survey of the main recycling routes available today, focusing specifically on pyrometallurgical and hydrometallurgical processes based in Europe, North America and Asia. Attention is also devoted to the recycling behaviour of individuals and companies and to the possible ways to increase their recycling rate. The comparison of different processes allows for the ranking of best practices as well as the drawbacks of different process units, with identification of which materials can be recovered, their recovery rate, and an assessment of the overall recycling efficiency of the process for different battery sizes (small and large, for portable electronics and electric vehicles, respectively). The analysis reveals that pyrometallurgical processes can flexibly treat different LIB chemistries but, since the electrolyte and graphite are burnt in the process, the global recycling efficiency cannot compete with hydrometallurgical processes, especially for small format batteries. Nevertheless, hydrometallurgical processes typically require preliminary mechanical separation treatments to separate the black mass, which contains valuable electrodic materials, as well as complex precipitation steps, which eventually reduce the material recovery rate and the applicability to diverse LIB chemistries. Finally, the study reports an analysis of the electrochemical performance of a battery made with recycled materials, showing that even if recycled cathodic materials had a lower gravimetric capacity and solid-state diffusivity, the performance of a recycled battery could be compensated by simple minor changes to the cell design which would ultimately decrease the specific energy density by a few percent compared to a LIB made with virgin materials

Three Cases of Long-Lasting Tumor Control with Erlotinib after Progression with Gefitinib in Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

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Design guidelines for secondary lithium-ion battery electrodes to overcome performance limitations of recycled cathode materials

Today the ever-growing demand of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles is posing a terrible burden on materials availability. In particular, high performance cathode materials, such as LiNixMnyCozO2 (NMC), are becoming increasingly critical, thus requiring recycling processes to maximise their reutilisation. Recyclers are moving towards closed loop solutions, such as co-precipitation and direct recycling methods, which however can provide recycled materials with decreased electrochemical and transport properties compared to virgin ones. This work uses numerical modelling to provide design guidelines to overcome performance losses of recycled cathode materials. The model and its parametrisation are validated against experimental data of a virgin NMC cell. An impact assessment on battery performance is carried out showing that a plausible decrease in theoretical volumetric capacity and Li diffusivity in cathode active material leads to both lower accessible capacity during discharge and inferior performance during charge. Nevertheless, a design analysis indicates that recycling degradation can be effectively overcome by simple compensatory measures, such as a limited increase in electrode thicknesses and/or minor decrease in active material diameter, providing similar roundtrip efficiency, energy density, safe thermal operation and performance of the original cell made with virgin materials

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 10

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1

Notulae to the Italian alien vascular flora: 10

In this contribution, new data concerning the distribution of vascular flora alien to Italy are presented. It includes new records, confirmations, exclusions, and status changes for Italy or for Italian administrative regions. Nomenclatural and distribution updates published elsewhere are provided as Suppl. material 1