Author(s)

Liangmou Yu¹, Bo Shu², Shiwen Yao²

¹Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Kunming Metallurgy College, Kunming, China.
²Yunnan Copper Co., Ltd., Kunming, China.

In this work, we recover cobalt from waste 18650-type lithiumion batteries by acid leaching. The cathode material is completely dissolved, after leaching waste batteries by using 10 mol/L industrial sulfuric acid at 70℃ for 1 h. The rate of cobalt leaching is nearly 100%. Removal of sodium carbonate, iron, aluminum and other impurities from the leaching solution was well performed by adjusting the pH to 2-3 with stirring vigorously. Finally, under the conditions of 55℃-60℃ of 240 A/m2 current density, electrodeposition current efficiency was 90.01%, the quality of the electrical output achieved cobalt 1A standard electrolytic cobalt, cobalt until greater than 90% yield. The process is easy and suitable for large-scale lithiumion batteries used in the recovery of valuable metals.

Component, Cobalt, 18650-Type Lithium-Ion Battery, Leaching, Electrodeposition

Yu, L. , Shu, B. and Yao, S. (2015) Recycling of Cobalt by Liquid Leaching from Waste 18650-Type Lithium-Ion Batteries. Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 5, 425-429. doi: 10.4236/aces.2015.54043.