I-Corps: Machine for Decentralized Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries

I-Corps：锂离子电池分散回收机器

• 批准号: 2219826
• 负责人: Siamak Farhad
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: University of Akron
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-04-01 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2219826&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Machine; Decentralized; Recycling; Lithium

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a machine designed to address the lithium-ion batteries recycling needs in an economically feasible way so that it directly benefits the society in numerous ways. It reduces the environmental impacts and the associate health risk for human and wildlife that may be caused due to landfilling these batteries. If lithium-ion batteries are landfilled, society will encounter environmental issues such as land and water contaminations and fire and explosion of landfilled batteries. It also reduces the needs to extract rare elements such as lithium and cobalt from mines to save the mines for next generations. Lastly, it improves the United States’ national security because recycling can keep the major elements or materials of lithium-ion batteries in the closed-loop of manufacturing in the country and reduces the dependency of the United States to import these elements or materials from other countries. This project will generate new jobs for labors and engineers in the United States and opens job opportunities for persons with disabilities since the process/machine can be automated. This work will increase the economic competitiveness of the United States compared to China and Europe, which are currently the pioneer in recycling lithium-ion batteries.This I-Corps project is based on the development of a recycling machine based on our two fundamental research activities, one for effective separation of electrode materials from current collectors, and one for efficient separation of anode and cathode active materials from each other. The key point is that the separations are performed without causing any damage to the morphology and composition of the anode and cathode active materials so that the separated materials can be directly regenerated and returned to the battery manufacturing process. This increases the profit from the obtained recycled materials from the proposed machine. These two key separation processes enable us to (1) offer a potentially small machine for recycling lithium-ion batteries, and (2) recycle all types of lithium-ion batteries with different chemistries and manufacturers with one machine. However, the machine operating parameters should be adjusted for each type of battery. Some of the value propositions of this machine are (1) it can be deployed fast in any location, (2) it reduces the cost of spent lithium-ion batteries transportation, handling and storage, (3) it improves the recycling efficiency, and (4) it produces more valuable outputs from spent lithium-ion batteries.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该开发项目的更广泛的影响/旨在以经济上可行的方式解决锂离子电池。水污染，燃烧垃圾的燃料和爆炸。该国和其他国家的材料减少了美国的工作和工程师的材料。与中国和欧洲相比，美国锂离子电池是基于我们的两项基本研究活动的回收机开发，一种是基于回收机的开发，一种是基于当前收集器的电极材料的开发，一种是彼此相互主动材料的电极材料。关键点是进行补充剂，而不会对形态造成任何损害，并组成阳极和阴极的活动材料，因此可以直接将分离的材料再生并返回到电池制造中。这两个键的分离过程使我们能够（1）提供回收锂离子电池的潜在购物中心，（2）回收所有类型的具有不同化学性能的锂离子电池，但是，机器操作参数应具有不同的化学作用。对每种电池进行调整。并使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的审查标准，被认为值得通过ation进行支持。