Lithium ion battery (LIB) is composed of valuable metals such as Li, Co, Ni and Cu, and less valuable metals of Al and Fe. The toxic and flammable electrolyte, LiPF6, and organic solvents, propylene carbonate (PC), ethylene carbonate (EC) and dimethyl carbonate (DC) are used for an electrolytic solution. By this reason, the treatment process should have crushing, classifying and hydrometallurgical treatments after burning LIB at about 500℃.
The recycling technology of used LIB has been investigated in order to recover rare metals such as Li, Co and Ni with the combination process of crushing, classifying and hydrometallurgical treatments. The burnt LIB used for PC was employed in this research. Then, the physical treatments consisting of crushing, classifying and magnetic separation, and the chemical treatments containing acid leaching, hydroxide precipitation, solvent extraction and carbonate precipitation methods were applied. The operating conditions for several treatments were clarified.
