A collaborative organisation at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) has been awarded a US$1.08 million contract by the US Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC) to extend development of its novel process to recycle spent lithium-ion batteries.
Following the successful completion of (also USABC funded) phase one earlier in 2018, the WPI team— formed of Fiat-Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors— will now use the contract award to fund a 24-month phase two project that will demonstrate their ability to recycle lithium-ion batteries and to generate a higher nickel cathode powder.
The WPI team has developed a patented closed-loop recycling process, in which batteries are first shredded, before the materials are separated and the cathode powders dissolved. Steel, graphite, and plastics are also recovered from the shredded batteries.
In phase one of the project, the WPI team used recovered material to produce new vehicle batteries comparable to those produced by original equipment manufacturers. In the second phase they will seek to demonstrate their ability to produce nickel-rich cathode powders— now favoured by battery and car manufacturers— from recycled batteries, and then produce high performance automotive batteries using those cathode powers.
The work of manufacturing and testing the new automotive batteries will be subcontracted to A123 Systems and Battery Resourcers, as was the case in phase one.
“In the first phase of our USABC project we gained fundamental knowledge about how to control our process to produce cathode particles with the desired properties”, said WPI team leader, Yan Wang, “While the conditions for forming cathode powders will be different with the high-nickel materials, our process is quite flexible and I believe it can be adapted to the new formulations.”
The WPI team will also explore how different anode materials— such as lithium, silicon, and titanium dioxide— and adhesives used in battery manufacturing affect the recycling process.
