Recycling electric car batteries

The popularity of electric and hybrid cars has grown not only in Brazil but also around the world. The world trend is that combustion cars will be replaced by electric or hybrid motors. For this, a new type of battery must be used, known as Li-ion. However, as well as other electronic equipment, these batteries have a useful life. For this reason, as a way to anticipate the waste that will be generated, it is pretended to develop recycling processes focusing on lesser impacts on the environment.

The hydrometallurgical route comes as an option to solve a part of the logistics and energy consumption problems. One of the main problems is the risk of explosion. Metallic parts, such as steel, aluminum, and copper are easily removed by handwork. In the cathode, lithium and cobalt grade, besides other metals, are much higher than in the ores. It makes the recycling of these batteries strategically important for the country.

Metals extraction presented in the cathode occurs in acid medium. Despite lithium and cobalt, nickel, manganese, magnesium, rare earth elements, and vanadium can also be found. After this step, the metals are separated from the liquor using separation techniques, such as ion exchange resins, solvent extraction, and precipitation. In this way, it is possible to reuse all parts of the battery and obtain new products and, then, decrease the inappropriate disposal of electronic residues.

The equipment used for this study are: atomic absorption (AAS or GFAAS), inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence (EDXRF), scanning electron microscope (SEM/EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD).