High-efficiency core-shell magnetic heavy-metal absorbents derived from spent-LiFePO4 Battery

Search for simple and efficient recycling methods to utilize spent lithium-ion batteries is crucial for achieving sustainable resource development and reducing the hazardous materials released from the spent batteries. Herein, we have developed a new strategy to utilize the spent LiFePO 4 batteries by utilizing the cathode plate as raw material to synthesize mesoporous core-shell adsorbent Mm@SiO 2 (Mm denoted as the magnetic material) through a simple alkaline leaching process. The as-converted material exhibits excellent adsorption capacity when it has been used to remove heavy metal ions in heavy metal polluted water. The adsorption capacities for Cu 2+ , Cd 2+ , and Mn 2+ have been achieved up to 71.23, 80.31 and 68.73 mg g −1 , respectively. The detailed adsorption mechanism has been elucidated with comprehensive characterization techniques, including TEM , XPS, NEXAS , and EXAFS, the edge shared [Cu 2 O 8 ] bipyramids can be fit against the EXAFS data to represent the atomic-scale local structure after Mm@SiO 2 adsorbs Cu 2+ . The present work demonstrates a novel routine to reutilize the spent lithium batteries , which is of great importance to achieve sustainable development based on the “waste-to-treasure” and “waste-to-control-waste” strategy for simultaneously reducing the hazardous release from industrial solid waste and heavy metal polluted water.