For all the emphasis on safety in our lives, you’d almost expect it to be easy. Only, as we see time and again, it takes intentional planning to engineer safety into work processes. This is particularly true in lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) recycling
Recycling battery materials and chemicals is a complex process including deep-discharging, shredding/granulating, black mass drying, electrolyte recovery with gas treatment, and finally classification and sorting of black mass, copper, aluminum, plastic and ferrous metals. Many hazards exist including exposure to combustible dust and flammable, corrosive, and toxic electrolytes.
At the upcoming Advanced Automotive Battery Conference, I am speaking about chemical “industry-level” engineering design and safety protocols with hazard and operability studies to prevent accidents and ensure process safety during recycling operations.
LIB Recycling Priorities
LIB recycling involves handling metals, plastics, and chemicals that present serious safety risks, including exposure to combustible dust and flammable, toxic electrolytes. To manage these hazards, operators should begin with comprehensive hazard and operability studies (HAZOPs) and process hazard analyses (PHAs) during the early design stages. These assessments, involving multiple disciplines, help integrate safety into every part of the process—often encompassing up to 25 unit operations.
Dust forms during shredding, granulating, drying, sorting, and packaging. Metal and plastic dust from shredding is highly combustible, particularly with lithium. Conducting these processes in inert nitrogen environments or using wet shredding eliminates ignition risk. Engineers must gather data on dust characteristics and follow ASTM E1226 testing and NFPA 660 standards to design proper containment systems.
The electrolytes used which are typically flammable, toxic, and corrosive must be characterized and safely managed. The recycling processes require systems to meet OSHA, NFPA, and VOC emission standards.
Finally, additional safety measures include explosion-proof electrical systems, fire suppression, PPE, labeling, and operator training as well as involving experienced chemical engineers to adopt a holistic safety culture for successful, incident-free battery recycling operations.
Safe and Reliable Recycling
Perlmutter & Idea Development provides the designs and resources for safe and reliable recycling for small format consumer batteries, medium format power tool batteries as well as large format EV batteries and wet and dry production scrap. Let me know if you will be attending Advanced Automotive Battery Conference and we can plan to meet. If not, please contact me and we can schedule a “lunch & learn” seminar at your facility.