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University of Pennsylvania: A greener, cleaner way to extract cobalt from 'junk' materials
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/greener-cleaner-way-extract-cobalt-junk-materialsA greener, cleaner way to extract cobalt from ‘junk’ materials
Penn researchers led a collaborative effort pioneering safer, more sustainable technique to extract elements critical to battery-powered technologies. Findings pave the way for getting value from materials that would otherwise be considered waste.
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“Our chemistry is attractive because it’s simple, works well, and efficiently separates nickel and cobalt—one of the more challenging separation problems in the field,” Schelter says. “This approach offers two key benefits: increasing the capacity to produce purified cobalt from mining operations with potentially minimal environmental harm, addressing the harshness of traditional purification chemicals, and creating value for discarded batteries by providing an efficient way to separate nickel and cobalt.”
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“A lot of separations chemistry is about manifesting differences between the things you want to separate,” Schelter says, “and in this case we found conditions where ammonia, which is relatively simple and inexpensive, binds differently to the nickel and cobalt hexammine complexes.”
By introducing a specific negatively charged molecule, or anion, like carbonate into the system, they created a molecular solid structure that causes the cobalt complex to precipitate out of the solution while leaving the nickel one dissolved. Their work showed that the carbonate anion selectively interacts with the cobalt complex by forming strong “hydrogen bonds” that create a stable precipitate. After precipitation, the cobalt-enriched solid is separated through filtration, washed with ammonia, and dried. The remaining solution contains nickel, which can then be processed separately.
“This process not only achieves high purities for both metals—99.4% for cobalt and more than 99% for nickel—but it also avoids the use of organic solvents and harsh acids commonly used in traditional separation methods,” says first author Boyang (Bobby) Zhang, a graduate student in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and a Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology Graduate Fellow. “It’s an inherently simple and scalable approach that offers environmental and economic advantages.”
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https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/greener-cleaner-way-extract-cobalt-junk-materialsPenn researchers led a collaborative effort pioneering safer, more sustainable technique to extract elements critical to battery-powered technologies. Findings pave the way for getting value from materials that would otherwise be considered waste.
…
“Our chemistry is attractive because it’s simple, works well, and efficiently separates nickel and cobalt—one of the more challenging separation problems in the field,” Schelter says. “This approach offers two key benefits: increasing the capacity to produce purified cobalt from mining operations with potentially minimal environmental harm, addressing the harshness of traditional purification chemicals, and creating value for discarded batteries by providing an efficient way to separate nickel and cobalt.”
…
“A lot of separations chemistry is about manifesting differences between the things you want to separate,” Schelter says, “and in this case we found conditions where ammonia, which is relatively simple and inexpensive, binds differently to the nickel and cobalt hexammine complexes.”
By introducing a specific negatively charged molecule, or anion, like carbonate into the system, they created a molecular solid structure that causes the cobalt complex to precipitate out of the solution while leaving the nickel one dissolved. Their work showed that the carbonate anion selectively interacts with the cobalt complex by forming strong “hydrogen bonds” that create a stable precipitate. After precipitation, the cobalt-enriched solid is separated through filtration, washed with ammonia, and dried. The remaining solution contains nickel, which can then be processed separately.
“This process not only achieves high purities for both metals—99.4% for cobalt and more than 99% for nickel—but it also avoids the use of organic solvents and harsh acids commonly used in traditional separation methods,” says first author Boyang (Bobby) Zhang, a graduate student in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and a Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology Graduate Fellow. “It’s an inherently simple and scalable approach that offers environmental and economic advantages.”
…