Back to results

Virginia Tech

The Design and Optimization of a Lithium-ion Battery Direct Recycling Process

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

Nowadays, Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have dominated the power source market in a variety of applications. Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2) is one of the most common cathode materials for LIBs in consumer electronics. The recycling of LIBs is important because cobalt is an expensive element that is dependent on foreign sources for production. Lithium-ion batteries need to be recycled and disposed properly when they reach the end of life (EOL) to avoid negative environmental impact. This project focuses on recycling cathode material (LiCoO2) by direct method. Two automation stages, tape peeling stage and unrolling stage, are designed for disassembling prismatic winding cores. Different sintering conditions (e.g., temperature, sintering atmosphere, the amount of lithium addition) are investigated to recycle EOL cathode materials. The results show that the capacity of the recycled cathode materials increases with increasing temperature. The extra Li addition leads to worse cycling performance. In addition, the sintering atmosphere has little influence on small- scale sintering. Also, most of directly recycled cathode materials have better electrochemical (EC) performance than commercial LiCoO2 (LCO) from Sigma, especially when cycling with 4.45V cutoff voltage.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Mechanical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Mechanical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Zheng, Panni
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Li, Zheng
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Ellis, Michael W.
  • Qiao, Rui

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:21783
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/93212

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Zheng, Panni. The Design and Optimization of a Lithium-ion Battery Direct Recycling Process. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93212