SBIR Phase I: Recovery of Critical Metals from Lithium Ion Battery Black Mass

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the creation of a reliable, economically viable, and cost-effective domestic supply of cobalt, nickel, and manganese by harvesting critical metals from spent lithium ion batteries. These critical metals are needed in modern infrastructure, transportation and communication. Today, the United States imports 78% of cobalt it consumes annually but recycles only 5% of cobalt-containing lithium-ion batteries. Replacing cobalt with nickel and manganese in these batteries puts supply of those metals at risk. This project proposes a straightforward recovery process to create supply chain stability, more economic activity through recyclers and less landfilling of potentially dangerous lithium ion batteries. The project aims to create standalone processing units that can be added to existing battery processing to create a refined source of these key metals for domestic use. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project seeks to validate a new approach to lithium ion battery recycling by integrating a metal sulfide sorbent technology into a capacitive deionization (CDI) electrochemical system for scalable and efficient recovery of cobalt, nickel, and manganese from spent batteries. CDI is an emerging process for removing charged species from a feed solution using porous electrodes. This work pairs CDI with efficient metal-sulfide sorbents by integrating the sorbent material into the cathodes for efficient recovery of critical metals from black mass leach solution. While CDI has typically involved carbon cathodes, metal sulfide sorbents have been selected for surface doping owing to their remarkable stability, adsorption capacity, and expected amenability to casting. The proposed work will: 1) demonstrate viable cation uptake from black mass into the sorbent material; 2) construct a capacitive deionization cell with the sorbent material integrated into the cathode for increased recovery; and 3) demonstrate recovery with appropriate selectivity toward cobalt, nickel, and manganese separations from black mass using a novel CDI cell. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.