Orange peels for recycling lithium batteries. Free Technical Library News

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Orange peels for lithium battery recycling

25.08.2020

The reuse of rare metals, which do not disappear from used lithium-containing batteries, is becoming more and more pressing. A serious disadvantage in the processing of used batteries is extremely harmful technical processes, during which a lot of toxic substances are released. Surprisingly, all harmful chemicals can be replaced with dried orange peels, as scientists from Singapore have proven.

The traditional process for recycling used lithium batteries involves heating and melting at temperatures above 500 °C. This requires the highest energy costs and is accompanied by the release of toxic gases. A cleaner technology has been proposed as a replacement. It consists in grinding batteries and subsequent precipitation of metals in a liquid medium - in a heated mixture of acids and hydrogen peroxide. This is called hydrometallurgy, and it is still in the experimental stage.

In the proposed form, hydrometallurgy is also not sugar. Especially on an industrial scale, if it comes to that. Another thing is if acids are replaced with something environmentally friendly. How? For example, orange peels, which contain sugars and acids necessary for the reaction with the precipitation of metals.

The use of orange peels as a reagent was proposed by scientists from Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. The peel of these citrus fruits was dried and then ground into a powder. Based on the powder, a mixture was created for the precipitation of metals in combination with citric acid, also extracted from citrus fruits. Plus hydrogen peroxide.

Scientists have extracted about 90% of lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese from used batteries. This is about the same as how many of these materials are recovered in the process of traditional "toxic" processing. Only after the "citrus" processing was the waste non-toxic.

From the metals obtained during the recycling of used batteries, scientists have made a new battery that is not inferior in performance to conventional new lithium-ion batteries. Further testing is currently underway to ensure new batteries will last a comparable number of charge/discharge cycles.

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