Occupational Threat of Recycling Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries by Vacuum Reduction

The recovery of spent lithium-ion batteries is a hot issue in the field of social sustainable development. At present, vacuum reduction is encouraged to be used in the resource recovery of spent lithium-ion batteries. However, the occupational threat of their recovery process has not been studied. This paper investigated the occupational threat of recovering spent lithium-ion batteries during vacuum reduction. The PM10 (0.065 mg/m3) and heavy metals in the gas have no occupational threat, whereas the gas contains dozens of toxic pollutants, such as ethanolamine, carbon monoxide, and 1,4-dioxane. Among them, the content of 1,4-dioxane reaches 5.67%, which have carcinogenic risk (ILCR = 2.28 x 10-3) and noncarcinogenic risk (HQ = 155.94). Molecular dynamics results indicate that the formation of pollutants is caused by NH2 center dot, F center dot, C=O center dot, CH=CH center dot, CH3 center dot, and so forth. Organic residues also contain pollutants, but they are easy to collect and are harmless. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor and control the pollutant gas. The occupational threat can be avoided by reducing the organic substances involved in the reaction and increasing the activated carbon to absorb the gas. This paper might be the first time to provide environmental information about the vacuum reduction process of recovering spent lithium-ion batteries.