Nickel Recovery from Spent Catalyst as Active Material in Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC) Cathode Synthesis

Abstract:

One of the high-capacity cathodes is NMC 622, which has a high nickel content. Spent nickel catalyst has a high nickel content. It was used as a source of nickel for synthesizing NMC 622 cathodes. The nickel used as a catalyst was leached using citric acid, and the resulting filtrate was combined with manganese sulfate and cobalt sulfate precursors in a specific ratio. Furthermore, co-precipitation was carried out by adding oxalic acid. The solid from the co-precipitation was separated, dried, and lithiated with lithium carbonate to obtain the NMC 622 cathode. The results of the XRD test on the obtained cathode revealed that the NMC622 material still contained metal impurities and exhibited lower crystallinity compared to commercial NMC622. Electrochemical testing also revealed that the capacity of the obtained cathode was still lower than that of the commercial cathode. The research also provided information that leaching spent nickel catalyst with 1.5 M citric acid resulted in a higher leaching efficiency. In addition, leaching with a citric acid concentration of 1.5 M also produced a cathode that had better physical and electrochemical characteristics than leaching using other concentrations.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volume 1187)
• Pages: 137-144
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/p-bZ0yu9
• Online since: February 2026
• Authors: Arif Jumari*, Endah Retno Dyartanti, Adrian Nur, Rolas R. Sianturi
• Keywords: Active Material, Electrochemical Performace, Leaching, Nickel Rich NMC Cathode, Spent Catalyst

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