Issue 44, 2021

A sustainable approach to cathode delamination using a green solvent

Abstract

Designing an environment-friendly delamination process for an end-of-life (EoL) composite cathode is a crucial step in direct cathode recycling. In this study, the green solvent dimethyl isosorbide (DMI) is explored to extract cathode active materials (AMs) from the Al current collector via dissolving the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder. Mechanistic insight suggests that binder removal from the Al substrate proceeds via reducing polymer interchain interaction through DMI penetrating into the PVDF crystalline region. Polymer–solvent interaction may increase via establishing hydrogen bond between PVDF and DMI, which facilitates binder removal. Analytical characterizations including 1H NMR, FTIR, XRD and SEM-EDS reveal that the molecular, micro, and crystal structures of the recovered cathode AMs, PVDF and Al foil are preserved. This finding is expected to provide a replacement for the toxic organic solvent N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and offers an effective, ecofriendly, and sustainable direct cathode recycling approach for spent Li-ion batteries.

Graphical abstract: A sustainable approach to cathode delamination using a green solvent

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
24 Jun 2021
Accepted
28 Jul 2021
First published
11 Aug 2021
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

RSC Adv., 2021,11, 27356-27368

A sustainable approach to cathode delamination using a green solvent

O. Buken, K. Mancini and A. Sarkar, RSC Adv., 2021, 11, 27356 DOI: 10.1039/D1RA04922D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

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