Green and Sustainable Recovery of MnO₂ from Alkaline Batteries for High-Performance Lithium Manganese Oxide Cathode

Massive spent Zn-MnO2 primary batteries have become a mounting problem to the environment and consume huge resources to neutralize the waste. This work proposes an effective recycling route, which converts the spent MnO2 in Zn-MnO2 batteries to LiMn2O4 (LMO) without any environmentally detrimental byproducts or energy-consuming process. The recycled LMO shows a pure phase and high-crystallinity properties, and more importantly, when used as lithium-ion cathodes, the recycled LMO exhibits impressive reversible capacity of 111.9 mAh g–1 and excellent cycling stability with 88.3% capacity retention after 500 cycles. Such recycling strategy not only solves the massive spent battery problems with its sustainable process but also transforms the waste (spent MnO2) into valuable assets (LIB cathodes).