Battery knowledge · Recycling and end of life
Cementation
Removing a dissolved metal by adding a more reactive metal powder: copper comes out of the leach solution as metal while iron dissolves in its place (Cu²⁺ + Fe → Cu + Fe²⁺). It is a common first purification step in battery recycling.
Example
Size the iron for a copper cementation
To remove 1.0 kg of dissolved copper, at least 0.88 kg of iron powder is needed, because one iron atom (55.85 g/mol) replaces each copper atom (63.55 g/mol). Plants dose more than this, since some iron also reduces ferric iron and reacts with the acid.
See it in the plant
- Cement copper: iron powder is stirred into 6331 kg of leach solution. Copper, the more noble metal, comes out as metal powder (341 kg) while iron dissolves in its place.
- Precipitate: alkali raises the pH until iron, aluminium and phosphate fall out as hydroxides and phosphates, while nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium stay dissolved.
- Press: the filter press squeezes the solids into a cake. 446 kg of Fe/Al cake leaves as a loss, carrying 1.0% of the nickel, cobalt and lithium with it.
- Pass on: 5544 kg of clean solution goes to metal separation.
Use in Lemonergy
Distinguish recovered material from a qualified product.
This is a reference concept. No executable Lemonergy block has been verified for this term.
References & further reading
Further reading on this topic
These sources provide broader context; they are not presented as citations for every statement in this entry.
- Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Topic background · Battery construction, recycling routes and U.S. waste-management context.
- Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles
Gavin Harper et al. · Nature · 2019
Topic background · Reuse, disassembly and mechanical, hydro-, pyro- and direct recycling routes.