Page 48 - Annual Report_21-22

Processing of spent and natural graphite for energy and aerospace applications

The project aims to recover the graphite from spent
lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). It has been much more
beneficial to expand the usage of graphite resources as
well as the economic perspective. The spent LIBs contain
several valuable materials, including Li, Al, Co, Cu, carbon
etc. This project focuses on the anode part recovery where
not much attention has been paid in this area of research.
This might be a misleading presumption that graphite is a
low cost and abundant in the earth’s crust and it can be
directly land filled or incinerated. Nowadays, exploitation
of graphite resources has been expanded in electric
vehicle sectors and grid storage also. Therefore, graphite
recovery is a powerful area of research and it’s very much
needed. A mild acid treatment has been employed to
remove the impurities associated with the spent graphite.
After the curing process, unwanted metal elements have
been removed thereby regenerated graphite with good
purity is attained. The overall flow sheet and obtained
results are shown in the following figure.

Development of binary and mixed metal sulfides for super capacitive / hybrid energy
storage systems

This project aims at developing novel sulfides and F/g at a current density of 1.6 A/g with excellent capacitive
their composites using various strategies yielding retention of 98.2 % after 5000 cycles. A symmetric SC
optimistic productivity in terms of electrical conductivity, could also exhibit high capacitive retention of 82.8% at a
morphological support, and robustness for overall high of 5 A/g after 5000 cycles.
performance enhancement as effective electrode
materials for SCs. A low-cost and scaled-up controlled
microwave synthesis method is developed for engineering
3D pyramidal faceted Chalcostibite (CuSbS ) architectures
2
toward supercapacitive application. The facets provide
plentiful electroactive sites along with easy transport of
ions, unveiling a high specific capacitance of 172.28F/g at
0.6 A/g (171.42 F/g at 5 mV/s). A simple time effective novel
microwave route for synthesizing 2D SnS was developed.
Parameter management of microwave irradiation can
meritoriously yield high pure products with the desired
shape and morphology in a few minutes, omitting the
need of complex operation conditions of conventional
methods. The as-synthesized 2D SnS polygonal microrods
named as polyrods (SPRs) provide large surface area and
active sites for high electrochemical activity. 2D SPRs were
found to reflect an excellent specific capacitance of 589.6

Recovery of metal ions via Multi-Helical Flow Reactor

Liquid-Liquid-Liquid Extraction and Stripping of Metal a demonstration of the same integrated process for
Ions in Multi-Helical Flow Reactor has been initiated as extraction of Cu Ions into organic solvent LIX 984N and
+2
focused based research. The work is in progress with then stripping into dilute H SO .
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46 ANNUAL REPORT 2021-22