THE EFFECT OF ATTRITION SCRUBBING AS A PRE-TREATMENT ON THE RECOVERY OF COPPER FROM END-OF-LIFE LITHIUM-ION BATTERIES IN FROTH FLOTATION

Recycling of metals from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries (EoL-LIBs) has become much more important in our society due to decreasing natural resources and the concept of sustainability. For this reason, the focus of most academic studies has recently been the recovery of active cathode materials by chemical methods. In contrast, research on the separation of anode-cathode foils and casing metals, which are important parts of LIBs, is quite rare. The main purpose of this study is to scrape off the black mass (or battery dust) adhering to the electrode foils as a result of gradual crushing and attrition scrubbing methods and then to separate the plastic and copper from other metals by the flotation method. The results showed that plastics with natural hydrophobicity could be removed with the help of a frother. The attrition scrubbing process positively affected the flotation of the -4+0.2 mm fraction, which had much more battery dust on its surface. By copper flotation performed in the -2+0.2 mm size group, a copper concentrate containing approximately 74.6% Cu was obtained with a recovery rate of 97.1%. In the sink product, the Al content increased to about 79.4% and the Al recovery efficiency was found to be 86.3%. The two-staged flotation method applied for recycling LIBs is simple and highly efficient for recycling metals and plastics.