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Metal Recovery from Spent LiMn2O4 Cathode Material Based on Sulfating Roasting with NaHSO4·H2O and Water Leaching

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Abstract

The reuse of waste materials helps to alleviate the pressure on sustainable economic development caused by the rapid consumption of natural resources. In this paper, a new process for the recovery of Li and Mn from spent LiMn2O4 cathode materials was studied. LiMn2O4 was mixed with NaHSO4·H2O according to a certain mass ratio and roasted, and then the roasted products were leached with deionized water. The chemical changes during roasting were studied by thermogravimetric analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy. After roasting, Li exists in the form of LiNaSO4, while the form of Mn is affected by the content of NaHSO4·H2O in the mixture. Within the corresponding temperature range, the chemical reaction between LiMn2O4 and NaHSO4·H2O can proceed spontaneously. During the reaction, the following reactions will occur in the II and IV stages: NaHSO4⋅H2O → NaHSO4 + H2O(g), Na2S2O7 → Na2SO4 + SO3(g) and reaction of different metal oxides with SO3, and their average activation energies are 153.07 kJ/mol and 533.81 kJ/mol, respectively, and the restrictive link is three-dimensional diffusion. The roasted products were leached with deionized water, the extraction rate of Li and Mn elements increases with the decrease of mixing mass ratio, when the mass ratio of LiMn2O4 to NaHSO4·H2O is 1:1.07, the roasting temperature is 873 K, the roasting time is 0.5 h, under the condition of water leaching temperature of 333 K, the extraction rates of Li and Mn were 96.6% and 9.7%, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51864032) and the Joint fund between Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science and State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Nonferrous Metals (No. 18LHZD002).

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  1. Zhenning Liu and Huaijing Chen have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Nonferrous Metals, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Zhenning Liu, Dahui Wang & Pingping Hu

  2. College of Science, Lanzhou University of Technology, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Huaijing Chen

  3. Gansu Province Product Quality Supervision and Inspection Research Institute, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Xiaofang Zhou

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  1. Zhenning Liu
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Correspondence to Dahui Wang.

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Liu, Z., Chen, H., Wang, D. et al. Metal Recovery from Spent LiMn2O4 Cathode Material Based on Sulfating Roasting with NaHSO4·H2O and Water Leaching. J. Sustain. Metall. 8, 684–699 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40831-022-00519-7

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