Direct recycling of lithium-ion battery production scrap - Solvent-based recovery and reuse of anode and cathode coating materials

The rapid growth in the use of lithium-ion batteries is leading to an increase in the number of battery cell factories around the world associated with significant production scrap rates. Direct recycling of this scrap material has both environmental and economic benefits, such as reducing the carbon footprint of cell manufacturing, as well as reducing production costs and raw material requirements. In this work, a solvent-based direct recycling route for anode and cathode coating materials is presented that allows direct reuse of the recovered coating materials. A high yield of recovery is achieved by mechanical stress in a suitable solvent (96 % for anodes, 85 % for cathodes). The resulting suspension is used for electrode production to study the influence of direct recycled material on the resulting electrode and cell performance. It can be seen that the electrodes and cells with up to 10 % recyclate content have similar high performance in terms of electrical conductivities, initial discharge capacity (approx. 165 mAh g-1 for graphite/NMC622 coin cells) and C-rate stability. Overall, the work demonstrates that direct solvent-based recycling is an efficient method for recycling electrode scrap without compromising the performance of the cells produced when fresh material is added to the recycled suspension.