Civil Engineering Department, K N Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.
School of Environment, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.
Waste Manag Res. 2022 Apr;40(4):402-409. doi: 10.1177/0734242X211022658. Epub 2021 Jun 1.
The use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has grown in recent years, making them a promising source of secondary raw materials due to their rich composition of valuable materials, such as Cobalt and Nickel. Recycling LIBs can help reduce fossil energy consumption, CO emissions, environmental pollution, and consumption of valuable materials with limited supplies. On the other hand, the hazards associated with spent LIBs recycling are mainly due to fires and explosions caused by unwanted short-circuiting. The high voltage and reactive components of end-of-life LIBs pose safety hazards during mechanical processing and crushing stages, as well as during storage and transportation. Electrochemical discharge using salt solutions is a simple, quick, and inexpensive way to eliminate such hazards. In this paper, three different salts (NaCl, NaS, and MgSO) from 12% to 20% concentration are investigated as possible candidates. The effectiveness of discharge was shown to be a function of molarity rather than ionic strength of the solution. Experiments also showed that the use of ultrasonic waves can dramatically improve the discharge process and reduce the required time more than 10-fold. This means that the drainage time was reduced from nearly 1 day to under 100 minutes. Finally, a practical setup in which the tips of the batteries are directly immersed inside the salt solution is proposed. This creative configuration can fully discharge the batteries in less than 5 minutes. Due to the fast discharge rates in this configuration, sedimentation and corrosion are also almost entirely avoided.
近年来，锂离子电池（LIBs）的使用量不断增加，由于其丰富的有价值材料组成，如钴和镍，因此成为有前途的二次原材料来源。回收 LIBs 有助于减少化石能源消耗、CO 排放、环境污染以及有限供应的有价值材料的消耗。另一方面，废旧 LIBs 回收带来的危害主要是由于不必要的短路导致的火灾和爆炸。报废 LIBs 的高电压和反应性组件在机械加工和粉碎阶段以及在储存和运输过程中存在安全隐患。使用盐溶液进行电化学放电是一种简单、快速且廉价的消除此类危险的方法。在本文中，研究了三种不同的盐（NaCl、NaS 和 MgSO），浓度从 12%到 20%。放电的有效性被证明是溶液摩尔浓度的函数，而不是离子强度的函数。实验还表明，使用超声波可以显著改善放电过程，并将所需时间缩短 10 倍以上。这意味着排水时间从近 1 天减少到不到 100 分钟。最后，提出了一种实用的设置，其中电池的尖端直接浸入盐溶液中。这种创造性的配置可以在不到 5 分钟的时间内完全放电。由于在这种配置下放电速度很快，沉降和腐蚀也几乎完全避免。
