Recovery of lithium ion batteries

1. A process for the reclaiming of copper, aluminum, carbon and cathode material from spent lithium ion batteries having a lithium metal oxide cathode material which comprises the steps of;

a) crushing spent lithium ion batteries under an aqueous spray to form a slurry mixture;

b) screening the slurry mixture through at least one mesh filter to recover the coarser pieces of aluminum and copper to form a screened slurry containing solids;

c) recovering the solids from the screened slurry by filtration to obtain a filter cake;

d) drying the filter cake from step c) to obtain a dried cake and heating the dried cake at a temperature of 400-800° C. to obtain a heated dried filter cake;

e) forming an aqueous slurry of the heated dried filter cake from step d) and passing the aqueous slurry into a froth or flotation apparatus to generate a froth or foam containing carbon;

f) filtering the froth or foam from step e) to recover carbon, and

g) recovering a cathode material from the bottom of said froth or flotation apparatus of step e).

2. The process of claim 1 wherein the heated dried filter cake is milled.

3. The process of claim 1 wherein the cathode material comprises lithium cobaltate.

4. The process of claim 1 wherein the crushing of spent lithium ion batteries is under an inert atmosphere.

5. The process of claim 1 wherein the spent lithium ion batteries are crushed by hammer milling.

6. The process of claim 1 wherein the slurry mixture is screened through a +20 mesh filter in step b).

7. The process of claim 1 wherein in step d) any binder is destroyed upon heating.

8. The process of claim 1 which comprises adding lithium hydroxide to the cathode material recovered in step g) and heating to 400-850° C.

9. The process of claim 8 wherein the lithium hydroxide is added to the cathode material to obtain a stoichiometric amount of lithium in the cathode material and heated from 400 to 850° C.