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New Technology for Metals Recovery from NIMH Batteries
25 September 2007
Nikkei. Mitsui Mining & Smelting Co. and Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. jointly developed technology that can recover 98.5% of the nickel, 96% of the cobalt, and 98% of the rare-earth mixture from NiMH batteries.
The batteries are first chilled to minus 196 C to keep chemical reactions from occurring, then crushed and stirred into water. Exploiting the fact that the speed at which materials precipitate in water depends on particle size, the material is sorted into fine and coarse particles.
The coarse particles contain large quantities of nickel and cobalt, which are extracted by immersing the particles in sulfuric acid and using solvents. The fine particles tend to contain lanthanum, cerium and other rare-earth metals, and a mixture of these is recovered.
The Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corp. also participated in development of the process.
September 25, 2007 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
Sounds like good news.
What's the current recovery rate with standard recycling practices?
Posted by: jack | Sep 25, 2007 8:59:56 AM
