What you'll learn:
- The full flowsheet of battery making with special focus on cathode materials
- At the end you will know what it takes to make cathode materials and be able to read metallurgical flowsheets
- Where to find Cobalt, Nickel and Lithium ores and how to mine them (mineralogy basics, crushing, screening, froth flotation)
- Pyrometallurgical steps to retrieve Cobalt and Nickel out of the ores (roasting, smelting, converting)
- Hydrometallurgical steps to retrieve Cobalt and Nickel from Matte (leaching, refining, precipitation, solvent extraction and much more)
- Lithium extraction and refining (from ores and from brine)
- Preparation of cathode material (precursor precipitation, lithiation, calcination, post processing, surface coating, alternative approaches)
- Battery Assembly (electrode slurry, calendaring, drying, assembly with separator and anode, winding, electrolyte filling, formation and assembly to battery)
- Recycling of Spent Lithium Ion Batteries (battery life cycle, recycling flowsheet, treatment of small portable batteries, recycling of large batteries)
This class focuses on cathode materials used in today's lithium-ion batteries (LiB).
Today's cathode materials typically contain lithium, nickel, and cobalt compounds. In this class, you will explore how to find the resources to make the cathode materials in the first place and all the steps to the finished battery from scratch.
We will cover the mineral sources and mining stages of lithium, cobalt, and nickel. All the approaches to extract these metals from the ores, including details on pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy. We will study the processing of the final cathode material. And how these materials are assembled into a battery. We will also cover recycling options for spent lithium ion batteries.
The purpose of this course is NOT to teach you about electrochemistry, nor about battery performance or the pros and cons of specific battery types.
The specific focus of this course will be on nickel, cobalt and lithium extractive metallurgy and the synthesis and assembly of common cathode materials such as LCO, NMC and NCA.
Learn how LiB works and what it contains.
Study the mining and processing operations: the ores, the crushing and screening operations, the froth flotation.
Become familiar with the extractive metallurgy of cobalt and nickel.
Find out how to perform leaching, electrowinning, or solvent extraction to obtain pure nickel and cobalt salts.
You'll also cover a complete section on lithium refining: learn where to find lithium resources. How to process brines and lithium ores.
Learn how to prepare the final cathode materials: including coprecipitation, lithiation, calcination, and cathode refining.
Assembling into a battery: electrode preparation, assembly with anode and separator, winding, electrolyte filling, and initial charging.
Recycle batteries: Explore battery life cycle, recycling flowsheet, treatment of small and large batteries.
Get inspired to keep learning with the large amount of literature, websites and books I have picked out for you.
Familiarize yourself with making cathode materials for LiB hassle-free! This class is very comprehensive: I have about 10 years of battery experience (ass well in academia as in industry) and a total of 20 years of chemistry research under my belt. Therefore, this course will be your reliable guide for cathode material preparation.
