One-Step Recycling of Trinary Cathode Materials in Lithium Ion Batteries and the Impact on Their Performance

A direct one-step recycling process was developed to recycle the trinary materials from the spent lithium ion batteries. The spent materials were collected after battery disassembling, electrode separation and pyrolysis and subjected to acid leaching. The element concentration in the obtained solution from the leaching process was determined with elemental analysis, and proper Ni, Co and Mn sources were added into the solution, achieving a ratio of n(Ni)∶n(Co)∶n(Mn)=5∶2∶3. The adjusted solution was directly used to co-precipitated with sodium oxalate and the obtained oxalate precipitates were mixed with Li sources. The trinary materials were obtained after sintering. The results exhibited that the recycled materials with this method could release a discharge capacity of 162 mAh/g and had a capacity retention ratio of 88% after 100 cycles. However, high-content impurity would affect the material performance, resulting in inferior electrochemical properties. This novel method can avoid the resource waste and energy loss in the traditional recycling process, whereby every metal is separated. The obtained materials through this process have higher additional value, promising an attractive commercial prospect.