System and method for recovering metal from battery materials
AssigneeLi-Cycle Corp.
InventorsChristopher James BIEDERMAN, Darcy Lionel TAIT, Timothy George JOHNSTON, Muhammad HAZIQ UDDIN
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Abstract
A method of processing size-reduced battery materials comprising aluminum, copper and black mass, may include: subjecting the size-reduced battery materials to a caustic leaching process to yield a pregnant leach solution; physically separating the pregnant leach solution into oversized solids and a screened leach stream, the oversized solids being rich in copper; and filtering the screened leach stream to yield a filter cake that is rich in black mass, and a filtered leach stream that is rich in aluminum.
Claims118
A system for processing size-reduced battery materials comprising aluminum, copper and black mass, the system comprising:
- a caustic leaching apparatus configured to leach the size-reduced battery materials and dissolve the aluminum contained in the size-reduced battery materials thereby yielding a pregnant leach solution,
- a first solid liquid separation apparatus downstream from the caustic leaching apparatus and configured to physically separate a solid, upgraded shred product from the pregnant leach solution thereby producing a screened leach stream, the upgraded shred product comprising solid copper material and having a higher concentration of copper and a lower concentration of aluminum than the screened leach stream;
- and
- a second solid liquid separation apparatus downstream from the first solid liquid separation apparatus configured to separate at least a portion of the black mass from the screened leach stream thereby providing an aluminum rich leach stream that comprises at least a majority of the aluminum from the size-reduced battery materials and is substantially depleted of black mass and copper.
The system of claim 23, wherein the slip stream comprises between about 10% to about 50% of the volume of the caustic leach recycle stream, preferably between about 15% to about 45%, more preferably between about 20% to about 40%, still more preferably between about 25% to about 35%, and most preferably between about 30% of the caustic leach recycle stream
A method of processing size-reduced battery materials comprising aluminum, copper and black mass, the method comprising:
- leaching the size-reduced battery materials using a caustic leaching apparatus containing a caustic leach solution to yield a pregnant leach solution;
- separating a solid, upgraded shred product comprising solid copper material from the pregnant leach solution using a first solid liquid separation apparatus thereby producing a screened leach stream having a lower concentration of copper and a higher concentration of aluminum than upgraded shred product;
- and
- separating at least a portion of the black mass material from the screened leach stream using a second solid liquid separator and obtaining an aluminum rich leach stream that comprises at least a majority of the aluminum from the size-reduced battery materials and is substantially depleted of at least one of black mass and copper.
The method of any one of claims 37 to 57, wherein the size-reduced battery materials comprise aluminum at a first aluminum concentration, copper at a first copper concentration, and black mass at a first black mass concentration, and wherein the upgraded shred product has a second copper concentration that is higher than the first copper concentration;
- and
- the black mass material has a second black mass concentration that is higher than the first black mass concentration.
A system for processing size-reduced battery materials comprising aluminum, copper and black mass, the system comprising:
- a caustic leaching apparatus configured to leach the shredded battery materials using a caustic leach solution;
- and
- downstream from the caustic leaching apparatus:
- a first solid liquid separation apparatus configured to separate a shred product comprising at least the copper from the size-reduced battery materials by mechanical separation;
- a second solid liquid separation apparatus configured to separate a target shred material comprising at least the black mass material from the size-reduced battery materials;
- and
- an aluminum separation apparatus configured to separate a solid comprising aluminum from the size-reduced battery materials.
A method of processing shredded battery materials to extract a target shred material, the method comprising:
- subjecting the shredded battery materials to a caustic leaching process to yield a pregnant leach solution;
- screening the pregnant leach solution to separate out large solids, and to provide a screened leach stream;
- filtering the screened leach stream to yield a filter cake comprising the target shred material, and an aluminum rich leach stream;
- subjecting the aluminum rich leach stream to a crystallization process to yield a caustic crystallization slurry comprising solid crystals;
- and
- filtering the caustic crystallization slurry to separate out solids, and thereby yield a caustic leach recycle stream.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.