(Special session) Hydrometallurgy for environmetal resources circular［Thu. Sep 14, 2023 PM Room-5］

[3501-04-03] Lithium-ion battery recycling industry in Korea

○Kyoungkeun Yoo¹ (1. National Korea Maritime and Ocean University)

Chairperson: Hajime Miki (Kyushu University)

Keywords:lithium ion battery, recycling industry, nickel, cobalt

The objective of this article is to summarize the commercial lithium ion battery (LIB) recycling processes in Korea and to suggest new direction for LIB recycling. A representative LIB recycler, SungEel Hitech Co. has successfully operated the LIB recycling process for over 10 years, and new recycling processes were recently proposed or developed by many recycling companies and battery manufacturers. In the new recycling processes, lithium is recovered before nickel and cobalt due to the rapid rise in lithium prices, and metal sulfate solution as final product of recycling process can be supplied to manufacturers. The main problem that the new recycling process will face is impurities, which will mainly come from end-of-life electric vehicles or new additives in LIB, although the conventional processes must be improved for mass processing.