Abstract
This paper provides a method for recycling spent lithium-ion battery cathode material NCM622, which is extremely innovative and simple to implement. The capacity of degraded NCM622 can be restored to the initial capacity by relithiation the degraded NCM622 with LiNO3-LiOH as the lithium salt. X-ray diffraction (XRD), inductively coupled plasma spectrometry (ICP), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are adopted to evaluate the properties of the regenerated NCM622. The capacity-degraded cathode particles with significant Li loss (≈ 20%) and capacity degradation (≈ 26.3%) can be successfully regenerated to achieve their original composition and crystal structures, leading to effective recovery of their capacity, cycling stability, and rate capability to the levels of the pristine materials the first discharge capacity of pristine, capacity-degraded, regenerated was 172.5 mAh/g, 127.1 mAh/g, 170.5 mAh/g (0.1 C). After cycling for 100 cycles at 1 C, the discharge capacity of all samples was 130. 5 mAh/g, 38.0 mAh/g, 133.1 mAh/g. This method can be widely used to recycle and regenerate NCM cathodes on a large scale of recycling from industrial production of LIBs.