Recycling of lithium-ion batteries will become imperative in the future, but comprehensive and sustainable processes for this are still rather lacking. Direct recycling comprising separation of the black mass components as a key step is regarded as the most seminal approach. This paper contributes a novel approach for such separation, that is fractionation in a tubular centrifuge. An aqueous dispersion of cathode materials (lithium iron phosphate, also referred to as LFP, and carbon black) serves as exemplary feed to be fractionated, desirably resulting in a sediment of pure LFP. This paper provides a detailed study of the commonly time-dependent output of the tubular centrifuge and introduces an approach aiming to achieve constant output. Therefore, three different settings are assessed, constantly low, constantly high and an increase in rotational speed over time. Constant settings result in the predictable unsatisfactory time-variant output, whereas rotational speed increase proves to be able to maintain constant centrate properties. With further process development, the concept of fractionation in tubular centrifuges may mature into a promising separation technique for black mass in a direct recycling process chain.

中文翻译：

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随时间变化的工艺参数进行离心分离研究，作为一种直接回收锂离子电池组件的新方法

未来，锂离子电池的回收将成为当务之急，但仍缺乏全面，可持续的流程。包括分离黑色物质成分在内的关键步骤的直接回收被认为是最重要的方法。本文为这种分离提供了一种新颖的方法，即在管式离心机中进行分馏。阴极材料（磷酸铁锂，也称为LFP，和炭黑）的水分散体用作要分馏的示例性进料，期望产生纯LFP的沉积物。本文对管状离心机通常随时间变化的输出进行了详细研究，并介绍了一种旨在实现恒定输出的方法。因此，我们评估了三种不同的设置，这些设置总是很低，随着时间的推移，转速会不断提高。恒定的设置会导致可预测的时变输出不令人满意，而事实证明，转速增加能够保持恒定的中心特性。随着工艺的进一步发展，在管式离心机中进行分级分离的概念可能会成熟，成为直接回收工艺链中黑物质分离的有前途的分离技术。