Yu Yang, Jiang Songyan, Yao Yiyuan, Zhang Xiaoqi, Zhang Long, Li Jingwen, Wang Fei, Liu Xiaotu, Huang Wei, Chen Da
College of Environment and Climate, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Pollution and Health, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China.
School of Management Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
Environ Sci Technol. 2025 Jun 24;59(24):12352-12363. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.5c02156. Epub 2025 Jun 12.
With the increasing application of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the green and efficient recycling of spent LIBs has become a global priority. However, current techniques share common drawbacks such as low cost-effectiveness, harsh operating conditions, and overlooking of post-treatment environmental hazards. Herein, we propose a green mechanochemical strategy that utilizes the electrons and reactive oxygen species generated by ball milling to achieve ultrahighly efficient metal recovery and removal of residual organic pollutants. The recovery efficiencies from lithium manganese oxide (LMO) batteries reached ∼100% for lithium and 94.3% for manganese within 60 min, and the representative residual organic pollutants were effectively removed, ranging from 73.1 to 99.1%. Similar efficiencies were achieved for lithium iron phosphate and nickel manganese cobalt batteries. The generation of abundant electrons and reactive oxygen species during the ball milling process is proposed as the main mechanism underlying the efficient metal recovery and pollutant degradation. The effective reduction in the valence state of manganese in the LMO powders was verified by X-ray adsorption fine structure spectroscopy. The excellent performance of our strategy in Li recovery and mitigating environmental hazards has far surpassed those of existing techniques and demonstrates the exceptional potential of mechanochemical ball milling as a green technique for LIB recycling.
随着锂离子电池（LIBs）应用的不断增加，废旧LIBs的绿色高效回收已成为全球优先事项。然而，目前的技术存在一些共同的缺点，如成本效益低、操作条件苛刻以及忽视后处理环境危害。在此，我们提出了一种绿色机械化学策略，利用球磨产生的电子和活性氧物种来实现超高效率的金属回收和去除残留有机污染物。在60分钟内，锂锰氧化物（LMO）电池中锂的回收效率达到约100%，锰的回收效率达到94.3%，代表性的残留有机污染物被有效去除，去除率在73.1%至99.1%之间。磷酸铁锂和镍锰钴电池也取得了类似的效率。球磨过程中大量电子和活性氧物种的产生被认为是高效金属回收和污染物降解的主要机制。通过X射线吸收精细结构光谱证实了LMO粉末中锰的价态有效降低。我们的策略在锂回收和减轻环境危害方面的优异性能远远超过了现有技术，并证明了机械化学球磨作为一种用于LIB回收的绿色技术具有巨大潜力。
