Optimal liberation of waste lithium-ion battery electrode material through attrition milling

This study is focused on the liberation of waste lithium-ion battery electrode material through a physical attrition milling process. High recovery of graphite and cathode material is an important driver for the process economics, thus a robust milling process to liberate these particles is important. To correlate liberation with the attrition milling efficiency, tests were conducted to determine optimal operational parameters, including propeller speed and solid-liquid ratio. Each parameter was tested with three different values, resulting in nine unique testing parameters. Once the tests were completed, the samples underwent size analyses to determine the amount of liberated electrode material. The optimal milling parameters were then determined by the design of experiments and were shown to significantly increase the amount of liberated electrode material compared to size reduction alone.