Use of water for battery recycling. Free Technical Library News

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Using Water to Recycle Batteries

30.04.2020

Manufacturers use toxic organic solvents to produce and process lithium-ion batteries. This complicates the processes and makes them dangerous for the environment and human health. Switching from solvents to aqueous solutions can make battery recycling less harmful and widespread.

Battery manufacturers are skeptical about the use of aqueous solutions in technological processes. Water reacts with lithium and degrades battery performance. But scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Virginia Tech took up the challenge, and along the way, some encouraging results have been obtained.

The new development has replaced the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder popular among battery manufacturers with two others: a latex-based water-dispersible binder and a water-soluble styrene-butadiene binder. The first is understood to be used in conjunction with an organic solvent (usually N-methyl-2-pyrolidone, NMP), while the other two interact with water.

Binders are needed in order to make battery cathodes and anodes. The design of the electrodes includes electrochemical materials in the form of powders (metals and graphite), which must be shaped and applied to current collectors made of copper or aluminum foil. If PVDF is used to make electrodes, then organic solvents are used, which are also used in the processing of electrodes after the end of the battery life. Switching to aqueous solutions and water-soluble binders makes it possible to get rid of harmful solvents both at the battery manufacturing stage and at the recycling stage.

Subsequent experiments with batteries on cathodes and anodes, produced using aqueous solutions, showed that after thousands of charge cycles, the operation of the batteries is practically no different from that of reference batteries produced using organic solvents. There is hope in this to transfer harmful production to a more environmentally friendly basis.

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