Iranian Journal of Chemical Engineering (IJChE)
Scientific Journal

Investigating the Effective Parameters on purity Purification of Recycled Graphite from Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries

Articles in Press

Document Type : Regular Article

Authors

Ramin Badrnezhad
Mohammad Mahdi Bahri
Mobin Gharemanlou
Mehrdad Shourehkandi
Shahram Ghanbari Pakdehi
Maryam Farid Mohammadi

Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Malek Ashtar University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

10.22034/ijche.2026.553020.1577
Abstract
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in various electronic devices and typically discarded after their service life, causing significant environmental damage and resource wastage. Therefore, recycling the valuable components of the batteries, such as graphite, is essential. Graphite, employed as the anode material, is one of the key components targeted for recovery. In graphite recycling operations from spent batteries, critical hydrometallurgical processes include primary and secondary leaching stages using sulfuric acid. In this research, both leaching processes were systematically optimized. The optimal conditions identified for primary leaching were a temperature of 77 °C, a sulfuric acid concentration of 1.75 M, a leaching duration of 4 hours, and a liquid-to-solid graphite powder ratio of 5. Under these conditions, the graphite purity after the primary leaching process was 99.56 wt%. Subsequently, in the secondary leaching stage, a final high purity of 99.98% was achieved for the graphite product. To evaluate the electrochemical performance of the recycled graphite, galvanostatic charge-discharge tests were conducted, which demonstrated a specific capacity of 350 mAh/g. This capacity is comparable to that of commercial graphite, confirming the effectiveness of the developed recycling process. 

Keywords

Lithium-ion battery
Graphite recovery
Primary/secondary leaching
Electrochemical behavior

Subjects

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Iranian Journal of Chemical Engineering (IJChE)

Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 04 May 2026

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