A Review on Hydrometallurgy of Typical Lithium-ion Batteries

The development of electronic products and electric vehicles (EVs) gives a burgeoning demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Such a large amount of LIBs challenges the protection of environment and supply of raw materials. On one hand, spent LIBs contain toxic and harmful substances, causing serious pollution. On the other hand, spent LIBs contains a lot of critical metals, which can be used as an important secondary resource to alleviate the shortage of raw material supply of LIBs to a certain extent. Therefore, the recycling of spent LIBs is imperative. In the recycling process, hydrometallurgical process has been widely used because of its high product purity and low air pollution. The current research status of hydrometallurgical processes for lithium iron phosphate battery (LFP) and lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide battery (NCM) was reviewed in this paper. The characteristics of different treatment technologies are analyzed. Finally, the prospect and development direction of recycling of lithium-ion batteries are given.