• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.77-81
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• 2001

Recently, used batteries are causing an environmental contamination and a waste of limited resources with increasing demand of portable secondary batteries in market. In developed countries, their governments have legally required the manufacture to collect and recycle the used batteries, so the related companies have formed an organization for collecting the used batteries and they are effectively recycling them. Unfortunately, an infrastructure for collecting and recycling the used batteries are not established at home yet, while volume of the used batteries are increasing. Therefore, we need an effective measure to ensure the recycling of the used batteries as soon as possible.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.13-20
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• 2023

The objective of this article is to summarize the commercial lithium ion battery (LIB) recycling processes in Korea and to suggest new direction for LIB recycling. A representative LIB recycler, SungEel Hitech Co. has successfully operated the LIB recycling process for over 10 years, and new recycling processes were recently proposed or developed by many recycling companies and battery manufacturers. In the new recycling processes, lithium is recovered before nickel and cobalt due to the rapid rise in lithium prices, and metal sulfate solution as final product of recycling process can be supplied to manufacturers. The main problem that the new recycling process will face is impurities, which will mainly come from end-of-life electric vehicles or new additives in LIB, although the conventional processes must be improved for mass processing.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.27-39
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• 2022

The global demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has been continuously increasing since the 1990s along with the growth of the portable electronic device market. Of late, the rapid growth of the electric vehicle market has further accelerated the demand for LIBs. The demand for the LIBs is expected to surpass the supply of lithium from natural resources in the near future, posing a risk to the global lithium supply chain. Moreover, the continuous accumulation of end-of-life LIBs is expected to cause serious environmental problems. To solve these problems, recycling the spent LIBs must be viewed as a critical technological challenge that must be urgently addressed. In this study, recycling LIBs using pyrometallurgical processes and post-processes for efficient lithium recovery are briefly reviewed along with the major accomplishments in the field and current challenges.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.14 no.6 s.68
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• pp.44-59
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• 2005

In this paper the world wide patents on the recycling of used batteries were inspected. The trend and direction of on-going and future technologies on this matter were analyzed. The range of search was limited in the open patents and in DB of U.S.A.(USPTO, DLPHION), Japan(PAJ), Europe(EPO), and Korea(KIPRIS). For the search condition the keyword, battery, batteries, electric cell, patent, and recycling, and IPC classification were used. The total of 2,490 cases was found at the first search stage, then, through the 2 steps of filtering processes the total of 871 cases was selected for the final analysis. These 871 cases were classified by countries, companies, and technologies between the year 1971 and the you 2000.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.16-25
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• 2012

There are several kinds of batteries such as zinc-air battery, lithium battery, Manganese dry battery, silver oxide battery, sodium-sulphur battery, lead acid battery, metal hydride secondary battery, nickel-cadmium battery, lithium ion battery, alkaline battery, etc. These days it has been widely studied for the recycling technologies of the used battery from view points of economy and efficiency. In this paper, patents and published papers on the recycling technologies of the used battery were analyzed. The range of search was limited in the open patents of USA (US), European Union (EU), Japan (JP), Korea (KR) and SCI journal articles from 1972 to 2011. Patents and journal articles were collected using key-words searching and filtered by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents and journal articles were analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.51-58
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• 2019

Dismantlement of lithium primary batteries without explosion is required to recycle the lithium primary batteries which could be exploded by heating too much or crushing. In the present study, the optimum discharging condition was investigated to dismantle the batteries without explosion. When the batteries were discharged with $0.5kmol{\cdot}m^{-3}$ sulfuric acid, the reactivity of the batteries decreased after 4 days at $35^{\circ}C$ and after 1 day at $50^{\circ}C$, respectively. This result shows that higher temperature removed the high reactivity of the batteries. Because loss of metals recycled increases when the batteries are discharged only with the sulfuric acid, discharging process using acid solution and water was newly proposed. When the batteries were discharged with water during 24 hours after discharging with $0.5kmol{\cdot}m^{-3}$ sulfuric acid during 6 hours, the batteries discharged were dismantled without explosion. Because decrease in loss of metals was accomplished by new process, the recycling process of the batteries could become economic by the 2-step discharging process.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.16 no.3 s.77
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• pp.50-60
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• 2007

There are several kinds of battery such as zinc-air battery, lithium battery, Manganese dry battery, silver oxide battery, mercury battery, sodium-sulphur battery, lead battery, nickel-hydrogen secondary battery, nickel-cadmium battery, lithium ion battery, alkaline battery, etc. These days it has been widely studied for the recycling technologies of the used battery from view points of economy and efficiency. In this paper, patents on the recycling technologies of the used lithium battery were analyzed. The range of search was limited in the open patents of USA(US), European Union(EP), Japan(JP), and Korea(KR) from 1986 to 2006. Patents were collected using key-words searching and filtered by filtering criteria. The trends of the patents was analyzed by the years, countries, companies, and technologies.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.3-9
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• 2007

Dismantlement of lithium primary batteries without explosion is required to recycle the lithium primary batteries which could be exploded by heating too much or crushing. In the present study, the optimum discharging condition was investigated to dismantle the batteries without explosion. When the batteries were discharged with $0.5kmol{\cdot}m^{-3}$ sulfuric acid, the batteries became inert after 4 days at $35^{\circ}C$ and after 1 day at $50^{\circ}C$, respectively. This result shows that higher temperature accelerates inert of the batteries. Because loss of metals recycled increases when the batteries are discharged only with the sulfuric acid, discharging process using acid solution and water was newly proposed. When the batteries were discharged with water during 24 hours after discharging with $0.5kmol{\cdot}m^{-3}$ sulfuric acid during 6 hours, the batteries discharged were dismantled without explosion. Because decrease in loss of metals was accomplished by new process, the recycling process of the batteries could become economic by the 2-step discharging process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2018.06a
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• pp.138-138
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• 2018

선박을 통한 해상수송은 세계 무역의 80% 이상을 차지하고 있으며, 대부분의 선박은 저질중유의 연소로부터 추진력을 발생시키는 디젤 엔진을 원동력으로 사용하고 있다. 이러한 디젤 엔진은 연소의 부산물로 매년 백만 톤 이상의 오염물질을 방출하는데, 그 주성분은 탄소로 이루어져 있고 고온 열분해 또는 압축 점화 엔진의 작동 부산물들이 소량 포함되어 있다. 이에 본 연구에서는 선박으로부터 배출된 폐 수트를 리튬이온전지용 도전재로 활용하기 위한 독특한 방법이 제안되었다. 실험에 사용된 폐 수트는 운항중인 컨테이너선으로부터 수집되었으며, 수집된 폐 수트는 탄소 성분 이외의 불순물을 제거하고 흑연화 정도를 개선시키기 위해 $2,000^{\circ}C$로 열처리되었다. 열처리된 폐 수트의 모폴로지를 확인하기 위해 투과전자현미경을 이용하여 그 형상을 관찰하였으며, 이를 통해 폐 수트의 일차 입자는 지름이 약 70-100 nm 정도인 양파껍질 모양의 탄소(carbon nano-onion)로 형성된다는 것이 확인되었다. 또한, XRD, RAMAN 분광법 및 BET 분석 결과를 통해, 열처리된 폐 수트가 결정성이 있는 흑연으로 재형성되었으며 비표면적은 일반적으로 사용되는 활물질에 비해 약간 더 높다는 것을 확인할 수 있었다. 한편, 이러한 특성은 리튬이온전지용 도전재로 활용될 수 있는 가능성을 보여주었고, 이는 전기화학적 정전류 충전 및 방전 테스트를 통해 그 성능이 확인되었다. 일반적으로 사용되는 도전재의 테스트 결과와 폐 수트를 도전재로 사용한 테스트 결과를 Fig. 1에 나타내었다. 이상의 실험 결과들을 미루어 볼 때, 선박으로부터 배출된 폐 수트가 리튬전지용 음극 활물질 및 도전재로 재활용될 수 있을 것으로 사료된다.

• Resources Recycling
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.22-30
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• 2018

In order to industrially recycle nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements included in waste NiMH batteries, electrode powder scraps were recovered by dismantle, crushing and classification from automobile waste battery module. As a result of leaching recovered electrode powder scrap with sulfuric acid solution, 99% of nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements were leached under reaction conditions of 1.0 M sulfuric acid solution, pulp density 25 g/L and reaction temperature $90^{\circ}C$ for 4 hours. In addition, the rare earth elements were able to separate from nickel / cobalt solution as cerium, lanthanum and neodymium precipitated under pH 2.0 using 10 M NaOH.