Green recycling methods to treat lithium-ion batteries E-waste: a circular approach to sustainability

E-waste generated from end-of-life spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is increasing at a rapid rate owing to the increasing consumption of these batteries in portable electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storage worldwide. On the one hand, landfilling and incinerating LIBs e-waste poses environmental and safety concerns owing to their constituent materials. On the other hand, scarcity of metal resources used in manufacturing LIBs and potential value creation through the recovery of these metal resources from spent LIBs has triggered increased interest in recycling spent LIBs from e-waste. State of the art recycling of spent LIBs involving pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy processes generates considerable unwanted environmental concerns. Hence, alternative innovative approaches toward the green recycling process of spent LIBs are essential to tackle large volumes of spent LIBs in an environmentally friendly way. Such evolving techniques for spent LIBs recycling based on green approaches, including bioleaching, waste for waste approach, and electrodeposition, are discussed here. Furthermore, the ways to regenerate strategic metals post leaching, efficiently reprocess extracted high-value materials, and reuse them in applications including electrode materials for new LIBs. The concept of “circular economy” is highlighted through closed-loop recycling of spent LIBs achieved through green-sustainable approaches. Ministry of National Development (MND) National Environmental Agency (NEA) National Research Foundation (NRF) Submitted/Accepted version A grant award from NEA (National Environmental Agency, Singapore) and Ministry of National Development (MND, Singapore) titled “Singapore –CEA Alliance for Research in Circular Economy (SCARCE, award number USS-IF-2018-4),” is acknowledged, which is a joint lab set up between Nanyang Technological University (NTU, Singapore) and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA, France).