Relithiation process for direct regeneration of cathode materials from spent lithium- ion batteries

Developing new technologies for the recycling of lithium-ion batteries is an urgent task because of their wide applications in electronics and electric vehicles. Direct recycling offers significantly greater advantages as a recycling strategy when compared with pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy routes, which minimizes energy use and waste by eliminating mining and processing steps. One of the biggest challenges for direct recycling is how to regenerate the spent cathode in a more energy-efficient and economic manner with less impact on the environment as majority of the battery value is embedded in the cathode materials. The loss of lithium in the cathode materials is commonly believed to be responsible for the capacity degradation. Relithiation processes are thus required to recover the electrochemical properties of the degraded cathodes. However, the state-of-the-art regeneration processes either are energetically expensive and time-consuming or require expensive reaction set-up with safety issues. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop a more energy- efficient, scalable, cost-effective, and sustainable relithiation process to regenerate a wide range of cathode materials from spent lithium-ion batteries.

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