Recycling and Reusing Copper and Aluminum Current-Collectors from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

Abstract

The global transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy systems continues to gain support from governments and investors. As a result, the demand for electric energy storage systems such as lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has substantially increased. This is a significant motivator for reassessing end-of-life strategies for these batteries. Most importantly, a strong focus on transitioning from landfilling to an efficient recycling system is necessary to ensure the reduction of total global emissions, especially those from LIBs. Furthermore, LIBs contain many resources which can be reused after recycling; however, the compositional and component complexity of LIBs poses many challenges. This study focuses on the recycling and reusing of copper (Cu) and aluminum (Al) foils, which are the anode and cathode current-collectors (CCs) of LIBs. For this purpose, methods for the purification of recycled Cu and Al CCs for reusing in LIBs are explored in this paper. To show the effectiveness of the purification, the recycled CCs are used to make new LIBs, followed by an investigation of the performance of the made LIBs. Overall, it seems that the LIBs’ CCs can be reused to make new LIBs. However, an improvement in the purification method is still recommended for future work to increase the new LIB cycling.