Intermediate project results
On Thursday 31st of August our project partner KU Leuven hosted the year 1 Generally Assembly meeting in Leuven. During this meeting it was great to discuss the ACROBAT project research progress, wherein each project partner showed interesting results along the recycling value chain of waste lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries:
- ACCUREC Recycling tested a dedicated pre-treatment process for LFP batteries, obtaining an active mass with impurities well-below the set target value (<3 wt%) and an optimal recovery rate above the set target (i.e. <5 wt% loss of active mass).
- ENEA: optimized a suite of analysis methods to enable the accurate determination of electrolyte compositions (solvent and salts) that will enable them to further develop their electrolyte recovery process, whereby both solvents and salts are recovered.
- Fraunhofer ILT: tested and optimized the application of Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy on active mass powders to allow them to detect its composition. They are now ready to build a continuous scanning setup for inline quality control of active mass.
- KU Leuven developed a flowsheet to leach, recover and purify lithium form end-of-life LFP battery active mass to obtain the valuable battery-grade lithium precursor, lithium hydroxide monohydrate.
- VITO managed to separate the by Accurec Recycling produced LFP active mass into spent LFP cathode material and spent graphite material fractions. VITO focusses now on the regeneration of the spent LFP material into active cathode material that could be used to produce new batteries.
Industrial Advisory Board and Sortbat visit
During the afternoon of the same day, the ACROBAT consortium moved to Tienen (Belgium) to visit the Sortbat n.v. waste battery sorting facility.
Finally, the ACROBAT project and its latest results were presented to ACROBAT’s Industrial Advisory Board, consisting of 4 industrial actors linked to the waste battery recycling value chain, namely Sortbat n.v., Bebat vzw, Umicore and ElectroCycling GmbH. These partners were keen to follow up on the project progress and provide valuable industrial perspectives for the future recycling of LFP batteries.