DIGISORT – Digitally improved sorting of LIB

Digitalisation is an important tool to develop and improve industrial processes. The collection and storage of detailed information have to be especially implemented with regard to modern recycling technologies in the field of lithium-ion battery (LIB) processing. Here, real-time recording should enable quick adjustments of the processing parameters and thus improve the process results and product qualities.
The DIGISORT project is part of the greenBatt research cluster which examines heuristically LIB recycling. The project itself focusses on the digitalisation of the mechanical separation via air flow sorting by implementing new sensor technology. Through separation, the components and valuables of lithium-ion batteries have to be transferred into concentrates of high qualities and high recovery rates. In detail, the feed material in air flow sorting is a mixture of electrode foils which is contaminated with other material fractions. Depending on the types of batteries processed and the previous processing steps and parameters, the properties of the mixture vary in size, mass, degree of liberation and composition. As a result, stationary conditions rarely apply in battery recycling and challenge the following separation processes.
A unique sensor technology is developed in DIGISORT recording the most important properties of the material in-line and on-line considering individually each fragment (particle) discretely. Image data with spectroscopic or hyperspectral information will be combined on particle level. Due to the enormous depth of information, these data sets will be structured as information vector for each particle. The control of the air flow sorting using the information vector is intended to increase the separation efficiency and thus the product quality and yield of the aluminium and copper concentrates.
The present contribution introduces the broadness of material characteristics in LIB recycling. Different model mixtures as well as real recycling materials are characterised with regard to their size, shape and composition using a SOPAT camera. These off-line generated data serve as a comparison for the sensor technology to be developed in DIGISORT. In addition to characterisation of the feed material, the camera will be used to describe the separation products and process efficiency.