XRD patterns of the MC processed cathode waste materials with Al and Ca as reducing agents
On 16 March 2023, the European Commission proposed a comprehensive set of priority actions to ensure the EU’s access to a secure, diversified, affordable and sustainable supply of critical raw materials (CRMs). With the demand for CRMs expected to skyrocket, Europe needs to mitigate the risks associated with the supply chain of strategic minerals, as highlighted by shortages in the aftermath of the Covid-19 and the energy crisis.
During the official statement, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen highlighted:
“This Act will bring us closer to our climate ambitions. It will significantly improve the refining, processing and recycling of critical raw materials here in Europe. Raw materials are vital for manufacturing key technologies for our twin transition – like wind power generation, hydrogen storage or batteries. And we’re strengthening our cooperation with reliable trading partners globally to reduce the EU’s current dependencies on just one or a few countries. It’s in our mutual interest to ramp up production in a sustainable manner and at the same time ensure the highest level of diversification of supply chains for our European businesses.”
In addition to an updated list of critical raw materials, the Act presents a set of clear benchmarks for domestic capacities along the strategic raw material supply chain, and to diversity EU supply by 2030:
Eurometaux’s immediate reaction, openly stated by the Director General Guy Thiran, emphasised : “Europe has a meaningful project pipeline for the mining, processing and recycling of base metals, battery materials, and rare earths (inside and outside its territory). These can be brought online by 2030 under the right conditions, adding to Europe’s existing production with the same guarantee of high climate and environmental performance.”
Although the proposed Regulation needs to pass the European Parliament‘s and the Council of the European Union’s evaluations before adoption and entry into force, the initiative sets a clear regulatory framework to support the development and the sustainable exploitation of domestic Li resources.
Read the official press release
VITO achieves direct lithium extraction, using the Gas-Diffusion Electrocrystallisation (GDEx) technology. GDEx uses gas-diffusion electrodes to achieve this goal, by producing in-situ the necessary quantities of mild chemicals, which in turn form precipitates containing lithium.
During this period, the GDEx team has conducted experiments with synthetic solutions. The effect of adding chemical supplements to the process is being investigated to optimise the lithium recovery yield and selectivity vs. competing ions in solution. After optimising the GDEx process with synthetic streams and learning about the precipitating mechanisms, we are looking forward to extending the process in various geothermal brine solutions obtained from the consortium partners. After precipitation in the form of layered-double hydroxides, the GDEx team will investigate the downstream steps to obtain battery-grade lithium hydroxide.
More information about the GDEx process can be found at http://gdex.vito.be
Focusing on mechanochemical (MC) processing, the recovery of high-value components from the cathode waste supplied by UMICORE is planned to be performed within Task 4.3.
The ball milling process of waste cathode material was optimised at laboratory scale using different reducing agents such as Al, Ca, and their mixtures. The role of the MC conditions (ball-to-sample ratio (B/S), ball milling time, and nature of the reducing material) was further investigated and analysed. This showed the kinetics of the MC-induced reduction reaction is sensitive to multiple processing parameters.
After the reduction reaction, the powder X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis revealed the formation of metallic composites and Al/or Ca oxides, as illustrated in the figure below. The upcoming research will be dedicated to investigating and optimising the aqueous leaching conditions of the ball-milled samples at laboratory scale.
XRD patterns of the MC processed cathode waste materials with Al and Ca as reducing agents
The main objective of the LiCORNE project is to increase the European Lithium (Li) processing and refining capacity to produce battery-grade chemicals from ores, brines and off-specification battery cathode materials. For 48 months (from the 1st of October 2022 to the 30th of September 2026), 14 new technologies to extract, recover and refine Li will be investigated by eight R&D centers in Europe.
Work Package 2 (WP2) is dedicated to the characterisation and supply of materials to the R&D activity. Following the first half-year of the project, a variety of materials were sent to lab partners for technology investigation. These materials can be sorted into three distinct groups:
Most of the materials are from European resources, spodumene and Li-rich mica being sources from mines in France and Austria, and geothermal brine sampled from the Upper Rhine Graben (France and Germany). The synthetic brine is prepared in UK. Only continental brine and off-spec cathode material are coming from non-European countries – Chile and Korea (see featured figure).
After 6 months of activities, all laboratories, except those conducting experiments related to the beneficiation of spodumene ore, have sufficient material to start their experiments.