As the battery industry continues to grow and more virgin materials are mined from the earth, the want and need for recycled battery materials is ever-increasing. Not only are resources being consumed at a rapid rate, but the mining process also produces harmful waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Recycling battery materials and using synthetic graphite cuts back on that and allows for reduced degradation of the environment.
LECO manufactures analyzers designed for the efficient analysis of recycled battery materials. These analyzers provide battery producers with characterization data and other quality-related insights, enabling the use of recycled materials as substitutes for virgin materials by minimizing uncertainty.
The Recycling Process
Battery recycling is a complex process that begins with breaking down batteries into smaller pieces mechanically and separating them into different categories. The residual substance for testing, often called „black mass,” is a mixture of metals in a powder-like form.
Several recycling methods exist, including pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, and electro-hydrometallurgy, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Despite the complexity, recycling is preferable to using virgin materials, as battery components are non-renewable resources.
Recovered graphite from black mass and synthetic graphite are crucial in the battery industry. Synthetic graphite, produced from petroleum coke and coal tar pitch through high-temperature treatment, offers high purity and can be tailored for battery applications, enhancing performance and consistency.
Manufacturers favor synthetic graphite for its uniformity and predictability, which improves battery life and efficiency. The integration of recycled and synthetic graphite is vital for sustainable and high-performance energy storage solutions as the industry evolves.
Testing Samples
Once the batteries have gone through the process of recycling, they are separated into different extracted elements or sold as black mass. To ensure all the recycled materials will work as intended and contain all the expected components, testing the material is an important next step. Luckily, LECO has the tools you’ll need to test and have confidence in the results. Key elements to test for include Carbon, Oxygen, and Sulfur, as well as moisture and ash. This is especially true when testing recycled and synthetic graphite.
Carbon levels are important because Carbon affects the conduction component of the battery. Oxygen is key to test for because it may affect the discharge capacity. Sulfur levels are often indicative of purity. Instruments like LECO’s SC832DR can determine both Carbon and Sulfur levels in a single run, providing analysts with useful data in a short amount of time. Oxygen determination can be performed with the ONH836, an elemental analyzer that has both thermal conductivity and infrared detectors for ensured accuracy.
When it comes to moisture and ash, LECO has state-of-the-art equipment, like our TGA801, that allows you to test both at once with up to 19 samples per run. That kind of efficiency can save loads of time and money in a lab. Moisture and ash are helpful when testing battery materials because moisture can affect the electrochemical performance of a battery and accelerate capacity fading, and ash can be used to compare the relative purity of various grades of graphite or highlight the purity of a sample of recycled material.
Start Using Recycled Battery Materials and Synthetic Graphite Today
With high-tech equipment that will work efficiently and cost-effectively in your lab, using recycled battery materials is more promising than ever. Join us for a webinar on “Characterization of Graphite and Black Mass Recycled Battery Materials” to learn more about how our analyzers work for these kinds of analyses and why it’s worth the investment to begin using recycled battery materials.
