Early-stage extraction of lithium from LCO cathodes via sucrose-assisted reductive roasting

The growing demand for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and consequent increase in end-of-life LIBs raises concerns over battery material supply security and safe management of hazardous waste. Recycling of LIBs can help address both problems by utilizing waste to recover critical materials. Compared to other cathode metals like Co and Ni, Li recovery rates remain relatively low in the industry and new strategies must be adopted to reach recovery rate targets of 80% or higher by 2032 set by the European Commission. This research explores the use of food-grade sucrose as a reductant to enable selective Li recovery through reductive roasting followed by water leaching. A Li leaching efficiency of 90.1% was achieved under optimized roasting conditions (500 °C for 60 minutes with 15 wt% sucrose dosage) indentified through a systematic study of roasting parameters. Lithium extraction was further improved to 94.5% by introducing additional pre-treatment steps to remove F and Al from the cathode material, which were found to form insoluble compounds with lithium, LiAlO₂ and LiF, during roasting. The Li leaching efficiency was shown to be highly dependent on the roasting temperature and sucrose dosage, while showing low sensitivity to roasting time due to the fast reduction mechanism and pyrolysis of sucrose. Notably, the roasting time could be reduced to below 10 minutes with minor impact (3.6%) on Li leaching efficiency, significantly lowering the energy demand for the process.