The present invention relates to a process for recycling battery materials, in particular lithium ion/polymer batteries, and to the subsequent use of the useful materials recovered by way of the process according to the invention.

Provided is a method of effectively separating impurities, in particular, iron contained in a raw material to be processed, and recovering valuable metal at a high rate of recovery. Provided is a method of producing valuable metal including cobalt (Co), comprising: a preparation step for preparing a raw material containing at least iron (Fe) and the valuable metal; a fusing step for heating and fusing the raw material into a melt and thereafter making the melt into a fusion containing alloy and slag; and a slag separation step for separating the slag out from the fusion to recover alloy containing the valuable metal. In the preparation step, the mass ratio of Fe/Co in the raw material is controlled to 0.5 or less. In the fusion step, the oxygen partial pressure in the melt generated by heating and fusing the raw material is made to be 10.sup.?9.0 atm or less.

A method for extracting lithium metal ions from glass includes contacting the glass with a molten salt bath for a duration of time, wherein the glass includes lithium and the contacting the glass with the molten salt bath for the duration of time extracts at least 40% of the lithium metal ions from the glass. The method further includes removing residual solids from the molten salt bath, wherein the residual solids include residual glass having a reduced concentration of lithium. The method further includes precipitating lithium metal ions from the molten salt bath to produce a solid precipitated lithium salt and separating the precipitated lithium salt from the molten salt bath.

Provided is a recovery method for valuable metals in copper anode slime. By using the recovery method of the disclosure, selenium, copper, tellurium, arsenic, lead, bismuth, and precious metals gold and silver in the copper anode slime are recovered. The method adopts two-step vacuum carbothermal reduction to replace reduction smelting of anode slime and stepwise blowing of noble lead in the traditional pyrometallurgy, and avoids the emission of arsenic-containing soot in the traditional process. The recovered gold-rich residue contains almost no base metals such as lead, bismuth, antimony, and arsenic. After subjecting the gold-rich residue to leaching gold by chlorination and reduction, a gold powder could be obtained therefrom with a lower content of base metals than traditional processes. Therefore, the method greatly reduces the amount of produced slag, shortens the production cycle, and reduces the loss of precious metals in the slag.

The method for recovering lithium hydroxide from a lithium secondary battery allows a powder comprising lithium and valuable metals to be prepared from the lithium secondary battery. The powder is reduced to form a preliminary precursor mixture including a preliminary lithium precursor and valuable metal-containing particles. The preliminary precursor mixture is primarily washed with water (H.sub.2O) to generate a lithium precursor aqueous solution and a precipitate. The lithium precursor is recovered through solid-liquid separation of the lithium precursor aqueous solution and the precipitate. The lithium precursor is recovered, through additional washing and solid-liquid separation, from the precipitate obtained through the solid-liquid separation. A calcium compound is added in the primary washing operation or the additional washing operation. Therefore, a highly-pure lithium precursor can be obtained without a complex leaching process and additional processes resulting from a wet process of an acid solution.

Provided is a method that is for producing, from a raw material containing an oxide including nickel and cobalt, a valuable metal containing said nickel and cobalt, and that enables the degree of reduction of an alloy obtained through a melting process to be adjusted efficiently and properly. The method comprises: a melting step for obtaining a melted product; and a slag separation step for separating a slag from the melted product and recovering an alloy containing the valuable metal. In the melting step, the degree of reduction in the melting process is determined on the basis of the proportion of the amount of cobalt (cobalt recovery rate) in the produced alloy, with respect to the amount of cobalt in the raw material, and, if the degree of reduction is determined to be excessive, the raw material containing an oxide including nickel and cobalt is added as an oxidizer.

A green resource-based method of thermal mass synergy in waste Integrated circuit board mainly includes carbonization cracking system, crushing and separation system, gasification cracking system and heat value utilization and comprehensive recovery system. Compared with existing techniques, carbonization cracking system can realize the dry distillation cracking of organic matter in waste integrated circuit board which converts carbon, hydrogen and other elements into fuel carbonized cracking gas and cracking oil, the heat from the combustion of the carbonization cracking gas of the invention provides the energy needed for the carbonization cracking to realize self-heating carbonization cracking. Carbonization cracking products are cracked and separated to solve the problems such as hard to break and organic coating metal caused by direct crushing and separation of traditional circuit boards which Improves crushing and separation effect; gasification cracking system achieves the comprehensive utilization of carbon, the gasified cracking gas can be used as a heat source for subsequent valuable metal recovery to further improve the utilization rate of calorific value. The invention has the characteristics of: high heat value utilization rate, low energy consumption, high metal recovery rate, short process recovery of valuable metal and no pollution of flue gas.

A system and method of converting tires or other solid carbon based material is disclosed, wherein the system and method includes providing a chamber, feeding tires or other solid carbon based material or both into the chamber, indirectly heating the chamber, rotating the heated chamber with the material in the heated chamber, collecting solid residue from the reduced material from the chamber, collecting vapor from the reduced material from the chamber, and collecting residual solids from the reduced material from the chamber for re-use. The chamber has an interior surface and may include one or more ribs on the interior surface for rotating and tumbling the material in the chamber while heating the material. In another embodiment, wherein the material includes a tire the system and method includes rotating and heating a tire in the chamber causing the tire to collapse and liquefy, exposing the metal in the tire which aids in grinding the carbon material in the tire as it tumbles, collecting solid residue, for example, tire carbons, such as carbon black, and collecting vapor, for example, vaporized oil, and benzene, methane gas, and syngas from the chamber. In another embodiment, the method includes heating the chamber to a temperature from about 350 F. to about 1100 F. using one or more low temperature gases, such as syngas, reclaimed from the material.

The invention discloses improvements and additional uses of thermo-mechanical processes using a rotary kiln for the separation of parts from a device that are held together by various means such as solder, epoxies, glues, and/or any other thermally degradable adhesives or underfills, and which is suitable for material size reduction via thermal decomposition of encapsulant materials such as integrated circuit casings or thermally degradable materials such as carbon-based hydro processing catalysts. The invention includes further sorting the materials according to predetermined size either in-situ or in series using a meshed vibrating table downstream of the rotary kiln. These devices can include, but not limited to, printed circuit boards, catalysts, solar panels, and the like.

A method for separating an amount of osmium from a mixture containing the osmium and at least one other additional metal is provided. In particular, method for forming and trapping OsO.sub.4 to separate the osmium from a mixture containing the osmium and at least one other additional metal is provided.