Advancing direct recycling of lithium-ion batteries: An efficient recovery of NMC cathode particles using...

Industrial Li-ion battery recycling typically relies on pyro- or hydrometallurgical routes that recover metals efficiently but require complex pretreatment, heavy chemical use, and destroy the morphology of cathode materials, limiting direct reuse. This work explores semi-continuous wet high-intensity magnetic separation (WHIMS) as a reagent-free method for concentrating Ni-Co-Mn (NMC111) cathode material from -63  µm black mass using only crushing and screening as pretreatment. Two steel matrices were tested. With the fine matrix at 0.9  T, 95% NMC recovery was achieved at 85 wt% grade. The coarse matrix at 1.1  T yielded 80% recovery at 90 wt% grade, preferentially recovering morphologically intact particles. WHIMS performance was influenced by particle liberation and matrix geometry. These results demonstrate that WHIMS can recover NMC while preserving its original morphology, a key step for direct recycling. Future work should focus on optimizing key parameters and assessing the upscaling from laboratory to pilot scale, including alternative WHIMS configurations to enhance selectivity, and evaluating the integration of WHIMS with other processes for multi-product recovery.