Extraction of Cobalt and Lithium from Lithium-Ion Batteries
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- Опубликовано: 18 окт 2024
- An acid-base approach to extracting Cobalt and Lithium from some old phone and laptop batteries.
Some small corrections:
1. The explanation presented at 3:45 - 4:12 is probably incorrect. As pointed out by @chemicalmaster3267, Co3+ has a higher reduction potential than H2O2 and is thus actually reduced to Co2+ in it's presence. In fact, addition of Hydrogen Peroxide is probably necessary to maximize yield of both Cobalt and Lithium.
The most likely explanation is the formation of Cobalt(II, III) Oxide when aqueous HCl is added to LiCoO2. The Cobalt(II, III) Oxide forms a porous "crust" around the LiCoO2, buffering it from further attack by the HCl. While Cobalt(II, III) Oxide does react with HCl, it is considerably slower. By adding H2O2, the Co3+ in the oxide is reduced, making it soluble and allowing the HCl to access the LiCoO2 again, creating Cl2 as a byproduct. This is why I noticed increased evolution of Cl2 when adding H2O2, but mistakenly believed the H2O2 was oxidizing the Co2+ to Co3+, forming the unstable CoCl3 which then decomposing to CoCl2 and Cl2.
Sauce: www.sciencedirect(dot)com/science/article/pii/S0045653521024929
2. Some of the formulas were "technically incorrect":
a. At 4:55, the "CoOH2" should be "Co(OH)2"
b. At 7:23 the balanced equation should read "CoCl2 + Na2CO3 === CoCO3 + 2 NaCl"
3. At 7:40 during the formation of Cobalt Carbonate, I mentioned that I "neutralized the pH". Technically, I continued to add Sodium Carbonate until the mother liquor turned clear (suggesting all the cobalt chloride had reacted). This actually brought the pH up to about 8.5.
Additional Thoughts and Notes:
1. If the goal is simply cool looking Cobalt Chloride without regard for the Lithium, the easiest thing to do is to simply dissolve everything - Aluminum and all - in some HCl. Then boil down the solution and let it crystalize. That's actually how I obtained the Cobalt Chloride crystal shown in the video.
2. Acetone may work for separating the oxides from the aluminum. When I shook the RBF vigorously, it did appear to loosen things quite a bit. Perhaps if it were placed into an ultrasonic cleaner while being heated under reflux it could be much more effective. But I don't know how practical that is.
3. It's probably best to just skip the ammonia all together. I left a small text box during the lithium precipitation briefly mentioning this. The only purpose of the ammonia was to reduce the overall sodium content. More sodium means I can't boil off as much of the solution, which means lower Lithium yield. However, given that Lithium Carbonate has a solubility of like 0.70g/100mL @ 100C, the impact is probably negligible and not worth the potential headache caused by adding more ions to solution. It'd be more impactful on final yield to bubble CO2 through the solution at the end to make the carbonate rather than adding Sodium Carbonate. If Ammonium IS used, don't add it past a pH of 2.
4. Filtering the Cobalt Hydroxide was a real PITA. Its very fine and thick, like a clay. So it takes FOREVER to gravity filter. Also, the highly alkaline solution has a tendency to make coffee filters very fragile and easy to tear. So unless a very robust vacuum filtration setup is used, expect to be very patient.
5. While I didn't test it myself, drying of the Cobalt Carbonate could probably be accelerated by doing a final wash with some ethanol (which it's still insoluble in but evaporates faster than water).
6. My Cobalt Carbonate yield is irrelevant to my Hydroxide yield, as I had used up nearly half of my hydroxides to try making Nitrate, Chloride, and Sulfate salts. It was when this didn't seem to be working that I moved forward with making the carbonate. Which was probably just a better idea all around since the carbonate is safer to handle and more useful than the hydroxides.
![BRASIL vs. PERÚ [4-0] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 10](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tbyOJKXfQnI/mqdefault.jpg)
I love the quality of this video and its really interesting to watch. Honestly I was suprised that this video has so little views
@@wieland3373 Thanks for the kind words!
It's because it is a new video with just two weeks on the RUclips, but it is interesting video to watch everything is precisely and well explained about extraction of transition metals from the Lithium batteries, I have actually seen many videos of these but there is only two at least someone can make follow up and this is a one up 👆
Wow! RUclips is full of half attempts or outright failures at battery extractions. You executed this flawlessly!
great video! Always a fun process. I stupidly did this about a year and a half ago on a slightly larger scale - with 25kgs of old laptop and phone batteries from my local computer repair place. So much work, so much time. But cobalt is an amazing element, and a lot of fun to play with. Safely ofc.
Some valid critiques in the comments on the specifics, but put forth without much compassion or understanding of your intention in sharing this. End of the day, anyone relying on a single youtube to be a source for perfect data is likely to find themselves in trouble regardless. Keen as to see what you do for your next vid, you've earned my sub for sure!
Incredible quality, I found all the information I was looking for, +1 subscriber.
This is super cool! The way you explain things is very interesting and keeps me captivated for the whole video. I especially appreciate your flame test at the end - very cool.
Absolutely beautiful precipitations, thanks for doing the close up shots of that, they're really satisfying! Great work
If only chemistry teaxlchers were at his level ... pretty pro edit and explanation I greatly enjoyed it
Major Doug's lab vibes here but with 2024 production quality! My hat is off to you beautiful unique content. I rarely sub but you earned it. Hope that's enough ego stroking to motivate more ;)
I miss Doug's lab so much! Once I got used to ChemPlayers synth voice it grew on me and I miss them too. Miss the Old NileRed as well, not that it was better, just different, have his new style as an addition to the old content would make me so happy. Some of the old ElementalMaker style content sprinkled here and there would be awesome too. But c'est la vie, life marches ever forward, and the new generation of RUclips Chemists are filling in those role beautifully
Awesome video! I immediately subscribed with the bell activated! looking forward to watching your other content. Have a nice day!
"Chemistry" is true Beauty. Thanks for sharing!
Absolute fucking magic. I love your voiceover, music, and beautiful chemistry.
Well done.
very well explained and recorded, love your pfp. awesome job!
Thanks for checking it out!
@@Alamist your pfp bro keep it
this video is edited very well. I thought you were going to have more like 100K subs with how well it was edited
Making chemical synthwave..❤
Inorganic chemistry is so much more interesting to watch than organic. Videos of clear solutions and white crystals require a bit of suspension of disbelief these days, as real youtube organic chem is pretty much dead at this point. When you're working with elements that have a different color for each oxidation state, I'm much more inclined to accept your conclusions. Nice work.
Depends on the type of organic chemistry. In one of my other videos I did an experiment that technically falls under the "Metalorganic" category since it involves chelating metal ions to organic molecules. Very pretty colors involved with that one.
But yeah, I agree. Generally organic chem is very underwhelming from a visual perspective because you're dealing with a lot of clear, white, and slightly-off-white substances. It was fun during College because we could actually run H-NMR and IR on our products to confirm the composition, but I doubt very many amateur chemists have access to either of those. Most accessible testing method I can think of is probably melting point, but that only tells you so much.
Thanks for checking out the video!
RUclips organic chem is at an all time high. Just look at Chemiolis who synthesizes something impressive every few months. Thy Labs is casually doing steroid chemistry at an incredibly large scale. NileRed is using NMR for anlysis. Many others are making cubane ...
great job! very interesting and I loved it all :)
Rare battery extraction W
Can you do a video where you test witch lithium baterys explode the best please.
so satisfying :D unique content is the best content
@Alamist Actually the hydrogen peroxide can help with the dissolution of the LiCoO2. This compound has cobalt as Co3+ ions and the hydrogen peroxide reduces them to Co2+ ions while releasing oxygen gas. Also if you use HCl as the acid to dissolve the LiCoO2 it will form chlorine gas as the Co3+ ions oxidize the chloride ions in hydrochloric acid. The hydrogen peroxide can also limit the release of chlorine to some extent by reacting with it to form hydrochloric acid and water.
Thank you for this explanation!
I added this part in to the video as a last minute afterthought (You might notice that the equations aren't perfectly accurate or properly balanced) and in hindsight wished I had taken more time to actually think about it.
After doing some more digging, my understanding is that the Co2+ ion is too stable to be oxidized by H2O2 except under some very specific circumstances. Sounds like the chlorine smell I noticed when adding H2O2 towards the end was most likely due to the H2O2 reacting with excess HCl to produce water and chlorine gas, and nothing to do with the formation and subsequent decomposition of CoCl3.
@@Alamist Well, the chlorine actually comes from the direct reaction between the hydrochloric acid and the lithium cobalt(III) oxide since cobalt(III) ions oxidize chloride ions from the HCl to form chlorine gas. You can avoid that by using a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric or nitric acid which only releases oxygen gas instead.
@@chemicalmaster3267 OK something wasn't quite adding up, but I think I've found the missing piece of the puzzle that lines up with what you're saying.
I found an article about acid-leaching LiCoO2 that talks about the formation of a mixed-valence solid (Co3O4) when dilute HCl is added to LiCoO2 in the absence of a stronger reducing agent. This Co3O4 forms a "Crust" around the LiCoO2 and reacts much more slowly with HCl than LiCoO2 does. This is probably why it looked like the reaction appeared to stop (along with the chlorine gas) even though there was plenty of excess acid in solution. Adding H2O2 (a good reducing agent in this specific context) helped to reduce the Co3+ in the Co3O4, making it soluble, and re-allowing direct access to the LiCoO2 by the HCl which resulted in an increase in chlorine gas production, like you said. Thus, it makes sense why I would have noticed chlorine gas suddenly being put off when adding H2O2 to a solution that appeared to have stopped reacting with the solids.
I think this explanation makes the most sense. It lines up with my experimental observations as well as your explanation of the interactions between the HCl and the Co3+. Thoughts?
Sauce: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0045653521024929
@@Alamist Well, if you can look at LiCoO2 as a kind of mixture between Li2O (lithium oxide) and Co2O3 (cobalt(III) oxide). If you multiply the lithium cobalt(III) oxide by two to make 2 moles of it and remove the lithium and oxygen in the lithium oxide ratio, you should find out that all that is left is cobalt(III) oxide. It's quite an interesting way to look at a compound that looks like a mixture between two others.
@@Alamist Also, I think there´s a better way to precipitate the lithium out of solution after removing aluminium, copper, nickel, cobalt and manganese from it: try adding a solution of sodium silicate to precipitate lithium silicate which is more insoluble than lithium carbonate. You don´t even need to heat the solution, otherwise the lithium silicate can actually react with hot water to form soluble lithium hydroxide and a precipitate of silicic acid. After filtering and washing the lithium silicate to remove soluble impurities, you can add an acid of your choice to form a soluble lithium salt while leaving behind a precipitate of silicic acid.
Love it
Благодарю. Полезно.
8:40 your hand.. turning into a Smurf, are we, hmm?
They're on to me!
nice job
I suspect that the initial hydroxide digestion step of the aluminum has led to the loss of some lithium, as the lithium hydroxide which likely formed is quite soluble in water and probably ended up in the sodium aluminate solution. Might have been interesting to save that and see if more lithium can be extracted from it.
I'm commenting early so you might mention it later but the membrane's from these batteries can be useful for some types of electrochemical divided cells.
I did not mention it in the video, but that is a good point!
I did save my membranes. I also separated the graphite and copper from my anodes.
While the video is about the Cobalt and Lithium, nearly every part of the battery can be separated and reused for other experiments, which is pretty awesome.
finally a super interesting video! thank u for doing it. Do more!
@@pipulas1Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!
I love the background music, what is it?
last cassette by William claeson
I did not understand what you put to make the solution turn yellowish white. I tried the same method, but the solution contained many cobalt ions. Please respond quickly. When I added sodium hydroxide, the solution remained red. What is the problem?
based mason jar chemistry
+1 sub
Where the manganese and nickel goes?
As interesting as it is, thats a lot of time, complexity and chemicals, to extract such a small volume of material.
If you were just after the lithium, it wouldn't matter if you kept the aluminum in right? You can wash all of it in HCl, adjust pH, add NaCO3 to precipitate the cobalt carbonate plus aluminum hydroxide, then move straight on to lithium extraction. The cobalt aluminum salt mix can be further separated with electrolysis.
Edit: Come to think of it, you could just set up the entire solution for electrolysis after the HCl wash. An aluminum anode and aluminum cathode will displace cobalt from the solution without it adhering to anything. The remaining solution can be adjusted to a high pH, cold filtered to remove the aluminum hydroxide and then hot filtered to remove the lithium hydroxide.
I think the issue you'd run into is that the aluminum would form sodium aluminate in a basic solution with sodium ions, which is highly water soluble and would remain in your lithium solution. I'm not sure to what extent Aluminum reacts with Lithium ions, as it appears to form complexes with other Alkali metals like potassium and sodium. It was simple enough to just dissolve it out at the beginning and eliminate that as a variable, so I didn't do too much more reading into it.
@@Alamist the bigger question vying for how you come to the final product: what IS your final product, and what IS the desired use?
Problem with this method is that all 3 (Al, Co, and some Li) will precipitate out as you approach neutral pH. The Al precipitation is a bit of a PITA as it likes to form gels and bind up the other metals into its web and filtering it is also a pain. You would want to do this by using NaOH (or KOH) only and bring to PH of 9-10. This should precipitate all of the Al and Co (and Mn and Ni if NMC cells) and leave Li in solution. pH should probably be pushing towards 11 if playing with NMC cells as Mn likes to stay in solution. This will also precipitate out Cu if you get some of the Cu foil mixed in. Decant and/or filter and then you can evaporate the solution down to the start of crystallization like the video and add carbonate for Li precipitation. Also, if you have phosphates around, those have lower lithium solubilities to get out more Li (srdata.nist.gov/solubility/IUPAC/SDS-31/SDS-31-pages_1.pdf). Trisodium Phosphate (TSP) is probably the cheapest phosphate to get ahold of. But then you have the issue of how to extract the Li from the phosphate. Also you cannot take the pH much past 11 or Al will redissolve as the aluminate ion. Though technically that won't matter if you are just after the Lithium and would be a good way to remove the Al from the Co/Ni/Mn/Cu. Same as what the video did but as the last step instead of the first step.
Of the Co/Ni/Mn/Cu, redissolve in acid and pH adjust to around 3. Add hydrogen peroxide or potassium permanganate to precipitate out the Mn as MnO2. Bleach may also work but some Co may oxidize to +3 and precipitate out with the Mn. Once the Mn is removed, you can either adjust the pH to around 6 using your favorite base or add in Ni/Co carbonates which will dissolve and precipitate out any Cu. You can skip this step if you were careful to not have Cu included in the acid leach. Precipitate out the remaining Ni/Co. I don't know of any easy way to separate Ni/Co without using something like Cyanex 272, etc.
I did find a reference that at near neutral pH (5-6), bleach can be used to precipitate Co in the +3 state as Co2O3. I haven't tried it yet though to see if it actually works. pH control and time are critical as the Ni ions will also tend to move into the +3 state but do so at a slower pace than Co. Higher pH accelerates the Ni oxidations but lower pH prevents Co +3 from forming, so it is about finding the right balance.
Is it worth doing this
Depends on your reasons. If your goal, like mine, it to attempt the extraction of raw materials from a commercial product, then yeah I think it's worth it. If you just need Cobalt Carbonate or Lithium Carbonate for other purposes, you're most likely better off just buying the raw materials directly.
It should be said that you have to be very careful with doing something like this lithium polymer based batteries can be fairly volatile when shorted and icr cells are just as bad, reason I bring this up is because if you’re not careful you can make a sketchy situation worse really quick!
@@CajunReaper95 It was said during the disclaimer at the very beginning of the video :)
how do you know that no other carbonates beside LI2CO3 are in your precipitation
Some Na (or potassium if using potassium hydroxide) is likely mixed in unless you do a few cold water washes to remove it. This will obviously lower your Li yield as you will also wash away some Li as well. Al may also be present if not completely removed in the first step. As for the others, that is easy. Co (and Ni and Cu) are very colorful and would be readily visible in the Li2CO3 as pink or green hues if any significant amounts were present.
@@sxl168 if you dont can make recrystallisation and a quatitative analysis of the product you are non sure what ist is. Only colors an a coloured flame are no proofes . No serious chemist would accept this. I guess your product is very impure and cannot serve for further use
There's definitely a variety of trace contaminants including copper, nickel, manganese, cobalt and aluminum. The largest contaminant is certainly sodium. If the aluminum content was higher, the powder would have a purple-grey hue to it. If any other metal contaminants were present in appreciable amounts it would also affect the hue of the powder. So a fluffy white powder suggests a purity of "good enough". I have no way of actually quantifying it.
@@Alamist a quatitative analysis of lithium would cost you about 50 bugs. Otherwise you could DIY a flame spectrometer with an photodiode and a CD
@@lotharmayring6063 ok that's fair. I shouldn't have said I have no way of testing it. Rather, I don't care enough about a quantitative analysis to spend money on it lol.
Just a comment for the sake of a comment
Just a reply for the sake of a reply
Just a disagreement to the reply for the sake of disagreement
@@Killerhurtz well if a disagreement is what you want, a comment is all you get
I also strongly disagree for the sake of disagreeing
Comment @@Telurino
Cobalt ate 2 carbon atoms ,it became cobalt ate 2 carbons.
?
@@YunxiaoChu cobalt ate 2 carbon atoms ,as a result it became cobalt 2 carbonate
Cobalt carbonate.
Did it smell like pineapple?
Unfortunately no :(
F*** the cobalt carbonate , we need the lithium
Boop
WITCHCRAFT!
The cobalt ate carbon so it became carbon ate ,because it ate carbon
Serving
Why do you guys hurry when speakibg? Don't you wanna explaib some topic here or you just wanna quickly read the text and don't give damn whether 80% of watchers are non-nat8ve speakers whose ears aren't readily tuned to catch each wprd you say after heavy processing by your haphazard articulation? 😊
Co(OH)₂ not CoOH₂!
Na₂CO₃ and not NaCO₃!
Formulas matter!
And stoichiometry in reactions... You need to work on that!
Yuh. The reactions on-screen were a last-second addition after like 3 hours of editing. Mistakes happen.
@@Alamist this does not justifies them! People already start to use wrong fotmulas in your comments. With wrong formulas, reactions will be wrong, with wrong reactions any calculation would be bad.
You should have those formulas and reaction written before making video, as those are used to calculate how much chemicals you need for reactions. YOU should know what are you doing, especially when others will take example from you and use your videos as tutorials
Mistakes can happen, but it is on you to correct them
@@ejkozan That's your opinion, which is fine. I can see where you're coming from and I appreciate you pointing the typo out.
However, this video is not a tutorial, as I outlined very clearly in the introduction. I did not design this video in a format that is supposed to make my experiment "reproducible". It's simply a documentation of my own experimental process for entertainment purposes. While I regret not double-checking my formulas beforehand, they get the idea across well enough to the casual viewer even if it's not 100% accurate or balanced. Regardless of all that, the stoichiometry wasn't even relevant for any part of this experiment anyways.
Like the other mistakes I caught after uploading, I will make a note in the video's description correcting this minor typo.
@@Alamist It is not opinion, you show, people interact, people learn. I know how easy it is to teach wrongly by mistake, and believe me, even when you do not want to teach, people will use your materials as such.
If things like formulas are not important: do not use them, just that, small thing. And if you use chemistry and its language then use it properly, stoichiometry, reactions, formulas are chemistry language. Use names and descriptions then, but never write wrong formulas. Because those stay in minds of watchers, and later on it starts to be problem. "Chemistry is hard", "Chemistry is confusing". Chemistry is not just nice colors, it is mostly everything else than colors. And first thing is understanding things and explaining. Explain stuff correctly, or don't at all, just showing visuals.
Learn from your mistakes, became better, never surrender :)
@@Alamist And look, even in liked by you comments people write "great explanation", but if you explain incorrectly, with wrong chemistry and formulas, but then you accept that they learn from your exlanations... Then your "simple documentation" makes bad things for chemistry.
Remember, you can always ask others for help with theory, formulas and so on. Better to slow down with video than teach others wrongly (yes, you are teaching others, it can be seen in comments, explaining IS teaching)