Fungi to recycle lithium batteries – The Republic

BATTERIE smartphone and tablet recyclable due to fungi. Could be the key to recover metals of exhausted batteries to lithium ions. This type of batteries, ubiquitous on today’s electronic devices, are highly polluting, and think about their disposal is of great importance to protect the environment and health. Millions of products end up in landfills or incinerators, creating emissions.

This is, in fact, the products that last for a defined number of charge and discharge cycles, after which they begin to “decay”. A team of researchers from the University of South Florida has shown that the combined use of three fungi such as Aspergillus niger, the Penicillium simplicissimum and Penicillium chrysogenum allows you to extract cobalt and lithium from batteries.

The recovery of these materials, then, would allow the industry to save money. “The idea came for the first time to a student who managed to extract some metals from the waste left as a result of mergers. We were observing tremendous growth of smartphones and all other products on rechargeable batteries, so we shifted our focus. the demand for lithium is increasing rapidly, continue to extract new resources is no longer sustainable, “he said Jeffrey A. Cunningham , who led the study.

There are other methods to separate the elements lithium, cobalt and other metals, but they require very high temperatures and corrosive chemicals. Cunningham’s team is developing a safe and sustainable way.

First, the researchers have dismantled the batteries and pulverized the cathodes. Then they exposed those obtained with mushrooms. These have begun to generate organic acids naturally that allowed the extraction of metals. “Through interaction with mushrooms, acid and the cathode pulverized it can extract a good quantity of cobalt and lithium. We aim to restore almost all the original material.,” Added Cunningham

The results obtained so far show that the use of oxalic acid and citric acid, two of the organic acids generated by fungi, it is possible to extract up to 85% of lithium and up to 48% of the cobalt from the cathodes of exhausted batteries. Gluconic acid, however, has not proven effective for extracting the metal. After exposure to fungi cobalt and lithium remain in a liquid acidic environment. At the moment the team is engaged in understanding how to extract the two parts of that liquid.

Topics:

University of South Florida

battery

Li

smartphone

tablet

recycling

disposal

environment

Starring:

Jeffrey A. Cunningham