Grant: Alliance Grants

With the onset of the rapid change from internal combustion engine (ICE) to electric vehicle (EV) in the automotive industry, the demand on raw materials that make up a Li-ion battery (LIB) is surging exponentially creating severe supply issues for critical elements like, Li, Ni and Co. With the stress and uncertainty of securing the critical minerals, predicted price increases in lithium and nickel could jeopardize the economics in EV battery production. Recycling could help alleviate the demands on critical virgin materials. Currently retired LIBs from electric vehicles are treated using energy- and chemical- intensive industrial processes, pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy, that focus only on the battery "pay" metals. A new emerging alternative is direct recycling, which aims at regenerating the cathode active material in a non-destructive way. This proposal is a collaboration of McGill University and NRC along with industry partners and Canadian Light Source building on a recently undertaken preliminary direct recycling project. More specifically, it is the overall goal of this research to design and develop wholly sustainable Li-ion battery recycling solutions incorporating circular economy and green processing concepts for application to different cathode chemistries as per market requirements. Early LIB generations include for example LMO and NMC111 cathode chemistries which no longer satisfy today's EV performance requirements. These old chemistries can be upcycled to convert into new generation chemistry like Ni-rich NMCs that the market is shifting to, and our research aims at developing sustainable processes to accomplish this task. Towards this end, we plan to employ life cycle assessment (LCA) tools in our process design and seek on re-introducing to value chain spent cathodes after proper re-functionalization via innovative and scalable material structure transformations with low carbon footprint.