The present invention relates to the desulfurisation of lead-containing waste. In particular, the present invention relates to a method in which lead-containing waste is desulfurised to form a desulfurised lead-containing waste material which is suitable for recycling into lead or leady oxide. The method is particularly suitable for desulfurising lead-acid battery paste.

A method according to an embodiment is for recovering a valuable metal from a waste electrode material of a lithium secondary battery by using lithium carbonate. An anode-cathode mixed electrode material that has been separated by draining, crushing, screening, and sorting a waste lithium secondary battery is preprocessed. A precipitation operation performed by adding lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) to a metal melt acquired by performing sulfuric acid dissolution using sulfuric acid. A valuable metal such as nickel, cobalt, manganese, aluminum, and copper is recovered as a residue in the form of a carbonate composite, and a lithium sulfate (Li2SO4) aqueous solution including lithium is recovered as a filtrate.

An improved method for recovering metals from spent catalysts, particularly from spent slurry catalysts, is disclosed. The method and associated processes comprising the method are useful to recover spent catalyst metals used in the petroleum and chemical processing industries. The method generally involves a combination of a pyrometallurgical and a hydrometallurgical method and includes forming a potassium carbonate calcine of a KOH leach residue of the spent catalyst containing an insoluble Group VIIIB/Group VIB/Group VB metal compound combined with potassium carbonate, and extracting and recovering soluble Group VIB metal and soluble Group VB metal compounds from the potassium carbonate calcine.

A method of making black mass from lithium containing batterie includes the steps of closing a chamber enclosing lithium-containing batteries and injecting nitrogen into the chamber to create an atmosphere sufficiently low in oxygen to prevent explosions and burning of the lithium-containing batteries. The lithium-containing batteries are shredded in the nitrogen atmosphere to produce shredded batteries. The shredded batteries are heated in the nitrogen atmosphere to a temperature sufficient to vaporize electrolyte and plastics from the batteries and produce pyrolyzed fragments. Lithium is present in a water-soluble nitrate form within the pyrolyzed fragments. The pyrolyzed fragments are classified to produce a black mass and a remaining metals fraction. The remaining metals fraction can be further classified to recover ferrous metals, light metals, and heavy metals.

There is provided a method for collecting and reusing an active material from positive electrode scrap. The positive electrode active material reuse method of the present disclosure includes (a) thermally treating positive electrode scrap comprising a lithium cobalt oxide positive electrode active material layer on a current collector in air for thermal decomposition of a binder and a conductive material in the active material layer, to separate the current collector from the active material layer, and collecting an active material in the active material layer, (b) washing the collected active material with a lithium compound solution which is basic in an aqueous solution and drying, and (c) annealing the washed active material with an addition of a lithium precursor to obtain a reusable active material.

Provided is a method for recovering lithium, for recovering lithium from a lithium ion secondary battery, the method including: a thermal treatment step of thermally treating a lithium ion secondary battery having a residual voltage higher than or equal to 80% of a rated voltage, to obtain a thermally treated product; a pulverizing step of pulverizing the thermally treated product, to obtain a pulverized product; and a lithium recovering step of recovering lithium from the pulverized product.

A method for recovering valuable substance, for recovering it from lithium ion secondary battery includes: thermal treatment step of thermally treating lithium ion secondary battery to obtain thermally treated product; pulverizing/classifying step of classifying pulverized product obtained by pulverizing thermally treated product, to obtain coarse and fine-grained products both containing valuable substance; water leaching step of immersing fine-grained product in water, to obtain water-leached slurry; wet magnetic sorting step of subjecting water-leached slurry to wet magnetic sorting, to sort water-leached slurry into magnetically attractable materials and non-magnetically attractable material slurry; and acid leaching step of adding acidic solution to either or both of non-magnetically attractable material slurry recovered by wet magnetic sorting and non-magnetically attractable materials obtained by solid-liquid separation of non-magnetically attractable material slurry to leach non-magnetically attractable materials at pH lower than 4, followed by solid-liquid separation to obtain acid leaching liquid and acid leaching residue.

Disclosed is a method for precipitating a polymer by adding a precipitation agent into a first suspension to form a second suspension; wherein the first suspension comprises a polymer and an aqueous solvent; and wherein the polymer comprises a copolymer comprising a structural unit derived from an acid group-containing monomer and a structural unit derived from a hydrophobic group-containing monomer. The method for precipitation of a polymer disclosed herein is developed to initiate the bond disruption and/or breakage between the polymer and the aqueous solvent within the second suspension. This is accompanied with the structural transformation of the polymer driven by the intermolecular and intramolecular interactions of the polymer chains which brings about the precipitation of the polymer. The method circumvents both complex separation process and contamination of the polymer, enables excellent materials recovery and allows the precipitation of the polymer to be achieved within a short time frame. An application of the method for precipitating a polymeric binder in a battery electrode is disclosed herein.

A system for processing a waste lithium-ion battery includes: a first aqueous solution generator that includes a first elution tank storing water, and that immerses an active material taken out from the waste lithium-ion battery in the water in the first elution tank and subjects the active material to carbon dioxide bubbling in the first elution tank to generate an aqueous solution of pH 5.5 to 8.5, in which lithium contained in the active material is eluted; a first solid-liquid separator that removes a solid component from the aqueous solution generated by the first aqueous solution generator; a first crystallizer that causes lithium carbonate to be deposited from the aqueous solution, from which the solid component has been removed by the first solid-liquid separator; and a second solid-liquid separator that performs solid-liquid separation on slurry containing the lithium carbonate deposited in the first crystallizer to take out the lithium carbonate.

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.