Identification of waste lithium-ion battery cell chemistry for recycling

Battery technology has attained a key position as an energy storage technology in decarbonization of energy systems. Lithium-ion batteries have become the dominant technology currently used in consumer appliances, electric vehicles (EVs), and industrial applications. However, lithium-ion batteries are not alike and can have different cathode chemistries which makes their recycling more complex. In addition, as larger quantities of batteries are starting to enter their end-of-life (EOL) stage, efficient handling and management of batteries with different cathode chemistry types are required. By identifying the cathode chemistry type prior to mechanical treatment, mixing of different cathode chemistries could be decreased, resulting in an increase in overall recycling efficiency. This study investigated the applicability of a non-destructive battery diagnostic methods, namely incremental capacity analysis (ICA), for identifying EOL lithium-ion battery chemistry. The study conducted ICA both on known reference batteries and EOL batteries from the recycling industry. Next, EOL batteries were crushed and the resulting fine active material was analysed to validate the ICA result. In addition, released gaseous and airborne particles were measured during crushing. The ICA results showed reliable identification of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) from other chemistries. In addition, lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), lithium nickel cobalt aluminum oxide (NCA) and lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) could be identified with various degrees. The identification may suffer if the battery is heavily used, and its state of health is low.