Eamonn said:
Hi
I recently read an article in new scientist about high deposits of lithium found in cornwall UK and I was thinking would it be profitable to recover from old batteries and how would it be done?
I'm sure someone here knows more about this than I do.
Eamonn
Lithium batteries are definitely not easy to deal with. Extractions and Ire made a video on it where he actually sprayed the LiCoOx off the substrate, let it settle out, then dissolved it in HCl, and then he got some some sodium oxalate which crashed out the cobalt. Then he added sodium carbonate to crash out the lithium. However this process is extremely low yielding
As for an actual process, I suggest just taking the batteries and directly chuck them into a destructive distillation apparatus possibly making a small vent in each. Heat them up really hot to distill out the plastic. When syngas stops exiting, close off the reaction chamber from the rest of the system for the next step
(to prevent a potential risk of an explosion by fuel vapor air mix. this last bit is critical when doing this next step.)
Now open up valve to open the system to the oxygen in the air while it’s still glowing hot. All the carbon is extremely hot and has a massive surface area so this essentially causes what’s known as a flash combustion. The carbon is all well above it’s autoignition temperature, has an insanely high reactive cross section, and hasn’t cooled on the inside. All the carbon can essentially burn at once.
If you used pure oxygen, you may very well get some rather extreme fireworks as it would cause your container to flash boil due to the extreme heat since such a fire can easily get above 5,000C! I myself learned this one the hard way on a paint can scale as I poured LOX on the material afterwards after it fumed quite a bit due to long chain hydrocarbons left over. Don’t ask me how I managed to get access to this stuff especially as a teen.
Ok after this, get some HCl and dissolve everything left over. Chlorine gas will be generated so a gas scrubber and PPE are no brainers.
Now, there’s two things you can do now. You could use hydrogen sulfide to precipitate all the transition metals then boil down to get your lithium salt
Or you can boil everything down and do a solvent extraction with ethanol as Lithium Chloride is actually soluble in ethanol while the other stuff isn’t. Then just evaporate the ethanol.
I’d recommend the second to be honest since it’s far less toxic.
Hope this helps.