In-situ temperature diffraction study of LiCoO2 carbothermic reduction process: optimizing the recycling of lithium and cobalt from battery

To address the alarming accumulation of waste lithium-ion batteries (wLIB) while decreasing the pressure imposed by Critical Raw Materials’ mining needed for their production, the key strategy is recycling. Currently, the industrially used method is high-temperature pyrolysis (> 1000°C). An alternative to lower temperatures is to turn to carbothermal reduction, exploiting the reducing activity of waste carbonaceous material to recover the metals contained in cathodes of wLIB, the most strategic components. The investigation of the biomass-driven reduction process of LiCoO2 (the most diffuse cathode) is here proposed by exploiting in-situ powder XRD study in temperature control (25-900°C) at beamline ID22, with the aim of identifying the obtained products, to find the best parameters in terms of temperature, time, atmosphere, and mass ratios. The possibility of significantly lowering operation temperatures (<600°C) and the high yields recovery of Li and Co as valuable raw materials