Full-Lifetime Recycling and Reutilization of Key Materials of Low-Cost and Sustainable Liquid Metal Batteries

Green and efficient recycling technology is an important challenge that restricts the large-scale application and sustainable development of energy storage batteries. Liquid metal batteries (LMBs) are considered to be the ideal choice for large-scale stationary energy storage due to the inherent advantages of low cost, long lifetime, and high safety. Herein, a full-lifetime recycling and reutilization strategy for LMBs based on facile molten salt electrochemical processes is proposed for the first time, which is verified in the Li||Sn-Sb LMBs. The achieved recycling efficiencies of anode, cathode, and electrolyte materials are similar to 80, similar to 94, and similar to 60%, respectively. The Li||Sb-Sn LMBs based on recycled materials are constructed and exhibit excellent cyclic performance and a 99.2% capacity retention after 1500 cycles. Moreover, the estimated levelized cost of energy of the LMBs based on the recycling strategy can be reduced by 0.021 $ kW h(-1), which is a 47.7% reduction. This work provides a new strategy for the full-lifetime recycling and reutilization of LMBs and a new roadmap for the sustainable development of electrochemical energy storage technology.

Automated summary

This research proposes a full-lifetime recycling and reutilization strategy for liquid metal batteries (LMBs) based on facile molten salt electrochemical processes. The achieved recycling efficiencies are high, and the batteries constructed with recycled materials exhibit excellent performance.