Projects per year
Abstract
A major transition to electric vehicles (EVs) is underway globally, as countries target reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. As this rapid growth continues, significant challenges remain around how to sustainably manage the accompanying large volumes of waste from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries that contain valuable rare earth and critical materials. Here, we show that high-shear exfoliation in aqueous surfactants can upcycle spent graphite anodes recovered from an EV into few-layer graphene dispersions. For the same hydrodynamic conditions, we report a process yield that is 37.5% higher when using spent graphite anodes as the precursor material over high-purity graphite flakes. When the surfactant concentration is increased, the average atomic layer number reduces in a similar way to that of high-purity precursors. We find that the electrical conductance of few-layer graphene produced using the graphite flake precursor is superior and identify the limitations when using aqueous surfactant solutions as the exfoliation medium for spent graphite anode material. Using these nontoxic solution-processable nanomaterial dispersions, functional paper-based electronic circuit boards were fabricated, illustrating the potential for end-to-end, environmentally sustainable upcycling of spent EV anodes into new technologies.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 16529-16538 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research |
Volume | 61 |
Issue number | 44 |
Early online date | 28 Oct 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 9 Nov 2022 |
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Dive into the research topics of 'Sustainable upcycling of spent electric vehicle anodes into solution-processable graphene nanomaterials'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 3 Finished
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Microfluidic metrology for processing low-dimensional materials at large scales
Stafford, J. (Principal Investigator)
1/08/22 → 30/09/23
Project: Research
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Multi-scale Exploration of 2D Material Selectivity in Turbulent Flows
Stafford, J. (Principal Investigator)
28/02/21 → 27/02/22
Project: Research Councils
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ReLIB - Faraday Challenge Fast Track proposal - Circular economy
Elliott, R. (Co-Investigator), Lee, R. (Co-Investigator), Allan, P. (Co-Investigator), Slater, P. (Co-Investigator), Stolkin, R. (Co-Investigator), Walton, A. (Co-Investigator), Overton, T. (Co-Investigator), Reed, D. (Co-Investigator), Anderson, P. (Principal Investigator), Windridge, D. (Co-Investigator) & Gough, R. (Co-Investigator)
Engineering & Physical Science Research Council
1/03/18 → 30/06/21
Project: Research Councils