Lithium Recycling from Spent NCM523 Cathode and Resynthesis of High-Nickel Lithium-Ion Battery Using Recovered Material.

Many approaches to recycle lithium nickel-cobalt-manganese oxide (NCM) cathodes from degraded lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have been reported, but they remain challenging due to environmental issues such as pollution or toxic waste. In this study, a sustainable and green approach for lithium recovery and reuse via mechanochemical method based on high-energy ball milling is employed to extract lithium from spent NCM without high temperature or toxic solution. The recycling process is as follows: planetary ball milling with spent NCM523 cathodes, lithium extraction as a carbonate through subsequent reaction in deionized water. Then the recovered lithium is used to synthesize a high-nickel NCM cathode material with a freshly prepared NCM precursor. Structural and chemical analyses revealed that the extracted lithium has 11.06% fluorine impurities in an agglomerated form. Consequently, the resynthesized NCM with recycled lithium (RNCM) has relatively low electrochemical performance compared to NCM with reagent lithium (HNCM), achieved a specific capacity of 80.63 mAh g-1 at 0.5 C and retains 36.7% capacity after 300 cycles. These findings suggest the feasibility of green recycling of commercial spent LIBs. Subsequent research to eliminate fluorine impurities may mitigate the environmental limitations associated with the current recycling process.