Nowadays, Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have dominated the power source market in a variety of applications. Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) is one of the most common cathode materials for LIBs in consumer electronics. The recycling of LIBs is important because cobalt is an expensive element that is dependent on foreign sources for production. Lithium-ion batteries need to be recycled and disposed properly when they reach the end of life (EOL) to avoid negative environmental impact. This project focuses on recycling cathode material (LiCoO2) by direct method. Two automation stages, tape peeling stage and unrolling stage, are designed for disassembling prismatic winding cores. Different sintering conditions (e.g., temperature, sintering atmosphere, the amount of lithium addition) are investigated to recycle EOL cathode materials. The results show that the capacity of the recycled cathode materials increases with increasing temperature. The extra Li addition leads to worse cycling performance. In addition, the sintering atmosphere has little influence on small- scale sintering. Also, most of directly recycled cathode materials have better electrochemical (EC) performance than commercial LiCoO2 (LCO) from Sigma, especially when cycling with 4.45V cutoff voltage. / Master of Science / Nowadays, Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have dominated the power source market in a variety of applications. A LIB contains an anode, a cathode and electrolyte. The cathode material is the most valuable component in the LIB. Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) is one of the most common cathode materials for LIBs in consumer electronics. The recycling of LIBs is important because cobalt is an expensive element that is dependent on foreign sources for production. Lithium-ion batteries need to be recycled and disposed properly when they reach end of life (EOL) to avoid negative environmental impact. The direct recycling is a cost effective and energy conservative method which can be divided into two steps: retrieving the cathode materials from EOL LIBs and regenerating the cathode materials. This project focuses on recycling LiCoO2 by direct method. Two automation modules, tape peeling stage and unrolling stage, are designed for a disassembling line which is the automation line to collect the cathodes materials. The EOL cathode materials is lithium deficient (Li1-xCoO2). To regenerate the EOL cathode materials, lithium is added into structure of cathode materials which is called the re-lithiation process. The different sintering conditions (e.g., temperature, sintering atmosphere, the amount of lithium addition) are investigated for the re-lithiation process. The results show that the capacity of the recycled cathode materials increases with increasing temperature. The extra Li addition in iv Li1-xCoO2 leads to worse cycling performance. In addition, sintering atmosphere has little influence on small- scale sintering. Most of directly recycled cathode materials have better electrochemical (EC) performance than commercial LiCoO2, especially when cycling with 4.45V cutoff voltage.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/93212 |
| Date | 21 August 2019 |
| Creators | Zheng, Panni |
| Contributors | Mechanical Engineering, Li, Zheng, Ellis, Michael W., Qiao, Rui |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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