Battery knowledge · Recycling and end of life
Impurity removal
Removing copper, iron and aluminium from the leach liquor before the valuable metals are separated, typically by cementation and by raising the pH until their hydroxides precipitate. Battery-grade products need impurities in the parts per million.
- Also called
- purification, iron and aluminium removal
Example
Recycling and end of life: an example situation
High mass recovery alone does not establish battery-grade purity or refining energy demand.
Read Impurity removal alongside Leaching in this context. Dissolving the metals in black mass, usually in sulfuric acid with hydrogen peroxide as a reducing agent so cobalt and manganese go into solution as their more soluble lower oxidation state. The leach liquor carries lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese, plus impurities such as copper and aluminium.
Use in Lemonergy
Distinguish recovered material from a qualified product.
This is a reference concept. No executable Lemonergy block has been verified for this term.
References & further reading
Further reading on this topic
These sources provide broader context; they are not presented as citations for every statement in this entry.
- Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Topic background · Battery construction, recycling routes and U.S. waste-management context.
- Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles
Gavin Harper et al. · Nature · 2019
Topic background · Reuse, disassembly and mechanical, hydro-, pyro- and direct recycling routes.