A Rapid in-situ Method to Identify the Cathode Type of End-of-Life Lithium-Ion Batteries by X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy for Optimizing Battery Recycling

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are extensively used for diverse applications including electric vehicles, hence resulting in an increasing number of end-of-life (EOL) LIBs that require efficient disposal and recycling. Although there are some established recycling processes for cathode materials, which are the most expensive and chemically complex components of LIBs, a rapid identification technology for the cathode chemical type is still needed to optimize recycling. We developed a rapid method that combines X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy and multivariate analysis to classify and identify the chemical information for whole EOL LIBs. After disassembling the batteries, the chemical composition of the cathode materials was analyzed by XRF, scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), and inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometry (ICP-OES). We demonstrate it is possible to use XRF technology to directly identify the types of cathode materials in EOL LIBs without disassembling in the optic of sorting metal before extraction.