Spent lithium battery contains valuable metals, with each representing in mass friction, including 5-10% cobalt, 5-7% lithium, 5-10% nickel, 5-10% copper and 5-10% aluminum, etc. The recovery of spent lithium battery will, especially, mitigate the shortage of cobalt. Method of spent lithium battery recovery falls into two groups, i.e. pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy.

Pyrometallurgy process of lithium battery recycling refers to the following steps: The battery shell is peeled and the contents in treated by reduction smelting to get copper-nickel-cobalt alloy, and aluminum and lithium are lost in smelting dross. The copper-nickel-cobalt alloy is processed by solvent extraction to produce metal salts or pure metal. With this approach, only copper, nickel and cobalt are recyclable. The method allows large treatment capacity and the smelting dross does no harm to the environment. However, it requires a complicated off-gas treatment system and  stable raw material supply. 

The hydrometallurgy process of lithium battery recycling can be broken into three steps: a. pre-treatment, breaking and separating the lithium battery in physical methods; b. leaching, the anode is leached out to have all the metal dissolve in the solution, existing in the form of ions; c. solvent extraction, to extract the metal ions separately by few steps or make anode material with the metal ions.

At present, the recycling of lithium battery is still in the primary stage. We are still working on the way to make the recycling more efficiency at lower cost.