Valorization of waste graphite deriving from "End Of Life Lithium-Ion Battery recycling" for a second use in wastewater treatment.

Exponential utilization of Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) has produced a notable amount of hazardous waste recently. The current practices focus on recovering precious metals available in cathode giving less priority for anode material (graphite) recoveries and valorizations. However, thinning of existing graphite ores, and extensive application of graphite for high tech industries made graphite to be a critical raw material to Europe recently. Accordingly, an attempt made to valorize black mass, after leaching out precious metals available in it. The batteries were physically processed, and the product was leached using 1mol/L, H2SO4 at 90°C for 90min with solid-liquid ratio 1/10. The remaining material was rich in graphite, which was used in this study. Three adsorption materials; Graphite Oxide (GO), Graphene Oxide (GrO) and Exfoliated graphite (EG) were made from the black mass to be used in organically contaminated wastewater treatment. After physical and chemical characterization, batch adsorption experiments were carried out separately for three different spiked organic contaminated (MO, MG, and MB) wastewater samples. Adsorption kinetics and isotherms were determined to conclude the best valorization option for the spent graphite available in black mass of LIBs. Accordingly, the study concluded that GrO to be the best option for spent graphite valorization.