Original pathway to selectively precipitate cobalt from an old battery solution thanks to imidazole linker

David Peralta (1) , Anna-Caroline Lavergne-Bril (1) , Emmanuel Billy , Jean-François Colin (1) , Didier Bloch , Sébastien Patoux

1 DEHT - Département de l'électricité et de l'hydrogène dans les transports

Owing to its specific properties, cobalt is a critical material for catalysis, stainless steel, and of course for Li-Ion batteries. Due to the intensive development of Li-ion batteries for transport applications (All-Electric and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles), the need for cobalt will dramatically increase. Unfortunately, resource is scarce and more than half of the cobalt production is presently concentrated in only one country (Democratic Republic of the Congo). Recycling and reusing cobalt from used batteries in a closed-loop process in order to limit cobalt imports becomes mandatory. In this paper, we propose a disruptive and very efficient route to selectively precipitate cobalt from a spent batteries solution, which consists in using imidazole linkers.The resulting hybrid material can be directly used as a precursor to produce a new cobalt-cathode based material

Domains: Chemical Sciences; Material chemistry

David Peralta, Anna-Caroline Lavergne-Bril, Emmanuel Billy, Jean-François Colin, Didier Bloch, et al.. Original pathway to selectively precipitate cobalt from an old battery solution thanks to imidazole linker. Separation and Purification Technology, 2021, 281, pp.119890. ⟨10.1016/j.seppur.2021.119890⟩. ⟨cea-03380376⟩