Embodiments described herein relate to methods of recycling battery waste. In some aspects, a method can include applying a first heat treatment at a temperature of between about 100 C. and about 700 C. to the battery waste, the first heat treatment decomposing at least about 80 wt % of the binder, separating the electrode material from the current collector, and applying a second heat treatment at a temperature between about 400 C. and about 1,200 C. to the electrode material to produce a regenerated electrode material, the second heat treatment decomposing at least 90 wt % of binder remaining in the electrode material to produce a regenerated electrode material. In some embodiments, the method can include applying a surface treatment to the electrode material to remove surface coatings and/or surface impurities from the electrode material. In some embodiments, the surface treatment can include applying a solvent to the electrode material.

A method for separating a transition metal from a waste positive electrode material includes step 1 of preparing a waste positive electrode material represented by Formula 1, step 2 of heat treating the waste positive electrode material in an inert gas atmosphere or an oxygen atmosphere to phase separate the waste positive electrode material into a lithium oxide and a metal oxide, step 3 of cooling an obtained product of step 2 to room temperature in an inert atmosphere, and step 4 of mixing a cooled product cooled to room temperature in step 3 with distilled water, and then filtering the mixture to leach a transition metal.

A heat treatment method for lithium ion battery waste includes: a battery heating step of heating lithium ion battery waste in a heat treatment furnace 1 while feeding an inert gas; and a gas combustion step of delivering a gas generated in the heat treatment furnace 1 into a gas combustion furnace 2 and burning the generated gas in the gas combustion furnace 2, wherein a gauge pressure in the heat treatment furnace is maintained in a range of 0.20 kPa to 0.01 kPa, when the lithium ion battery waste is heated while feeding the inert gas into the heat treatment furnace 1 in the battery heating step.

A method and an apparatus for recovering copper, bronze and lead by allowing methane gas to flow into a reactor and heat-treating a mixture of copper oxide, tin oxide and lead oxide under a temperature condition of 700-900 C. is disclosed. The method includes placing a mixture of copper oxide, tin oxide and lead oxide in a reactor, increasing the temperature inside the reactor, and allowing a reductive gas to flow into the reactor so as to heat-treat the mixture.

A multi-source solid waste recycling method based on composition design for calcium-silicon-aluminum-magnesium oxide includes collecting multi-source solid waste composition data; calculating and designing compositions of calcium oxide, silicon oxide, aluminum oxide and magnesium oxide units to obtain an inorganic non-metallic raw material with a target composition; and melts the raw material into slag, and uses carbon, metallic aluminum, aluminum nitride, aluminum carbide, silicon nitride and silicon carbide in the multi-source solid waste as reducing agents. The slag provides a high-temperature homogeneous reaction environment and serves as a solvent for reactants, the reducing agents reduce valuable metals in the slag to obtain an alloy, thereby achieving recovery of the valuable metals, and the slag is used for the inorganic non-metallic material in a high-value mode.

A cooling system includes a sensor and a cooling conveyor. The sensor measures a dust characteristic of dust discharged from a dust cyclone of a decoating system. The cooling conveyor receives the dust from the dust cyclone and cools the dust at a cooling rate, and the cooling rate may be controlled based on the measured dust characteristic. A method of cooling dust from a dust cyclone of a decoating system with a cooling system includes measuring a dust characteristic of the dust discharged from the dust cyclone and into a cooling conveyor of the cooling system. The method also includes advancing the dust along the cooling conveyor and cooling the dust at a cooling rate based on the measured dust characteristic.

A method of the invention for treatment of particulate material for metal recovery includes heating a furnace to a first temperature, feeding a particulate material into the furnace, and before or after heating of the raw material, feeding a reducing gas flow through the furnace. The particulate material is heated in the furnace for volatilizing one or more metals contained in the ash into the gas flow, and the volatilized particles are recovered in one or more collection units. A system for treatment of particulate material for metal recovery includes a heated furnace for receiving flows of reduction gas and particulate material, a collection unit for volatilized particles, and a collection unit for non-volatilized material.

A method is provided for treating a rare earth metal-bearing scrap material by melting an extractant selected from the group consisting of bismuth (Bi) and lead (Pb) and contacting the melted extractant and the scrap material at a temperature and time to recover at least one of the light rare earth metal content and the heavy rare earth metal content as a metallic extractant alloy, which can be subjected to vacuum distillation or sublimation to recover the rare earth metal(s). The method can be practiced to recover the light rare earth metal content and the heavy rare earth metal content concurrently in a one-step process or separately and sequentially in a two-step process.

Disclosed is a process for recovering copper from secondary raw materials including in a feed batch smelting in a furnace a feedstock including copper oxide and elemental iron for forming a concentrated copper intermediate, whereby heat is generated by the redox reactions converting iron to oxide and copper oxide to copper, whereby copper collects in a molten liquid metal phase and iron oxides collect in a supernatant liquid slag phase, whereby at the end of the batch the liquid phases separate and may be removed from the furnace as smelter slag and as the concentrated copper intermediate, wherein during the smelting step an excess of elemental iron is maintained in the furnace relative to the amount required for completing the redox reactions, and further heat input is provided by the injection of an oxygen containing gas for oxidizing the excess iron.

The present invention concerns a process for the recovery of metals and of heat from spent rechargeable batteries, in particular from spent Li-ion batteries containing relatively low amounts of cobalt. It has in particular been found that such cobalt-depleted Li-ion batteries can be processed on a copper smelter by: feeding a useful charge and slag formers to the smelter; adding heating and reducing agents; whereby at least part of the heating and/or reducing agents is replaced by Li-ion batteries containing one or more of metallic Fe, metallic Al, and carbon. Using spent LFP or LMO batteries as a feed on the Cu smelter, the production rate of Cu blister is increased, while the energy consumption from fossil sources is decreased.