{"id":52516,"date":"2026-03-17T14:47:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/?post_type=news&p=52516"},"modified":"2026-03-17T14:47:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T18:47:25","slug":"cobalt-and-nickel","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/cobalt-and-nickel\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopkins Researchers Develop Greener Method to Separate Cobalt and Nickel"},"content":{"rendered":"

As demand for lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from electric vehicles to smartphones and grid-scale storage systems, increases, so too does the need for more cobalt and nickel, minerals that are essential to the batteries\u2019 chemistry.<\/p>\n

Currently, separating cobalt and nickel from materials involves solvent extraction, a process widely used in mining operations. While effective, the method relies on large volumes of organic solvents and other chemical agents that are environmentally harmful and expensive.<\/p>\n

Yayuan Liu<\/a>, an assistant professor of\u00a0<\/span>chemical and biomolecular engineering<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and associate researcher with the\u00a0<\/span>Ralph O\u2019Connor Sustainable Energy Institute<\/a>, and\u00a0<\/span>Tianchen Li<\/a>, a ChemBE postdoctoral fellow, have identified electrowinning, an electrochemical technique employed by industry in which dissolved copper ions are reduced and deposited as solid metal onto an electrode, as a more sustainable way to separate and recover these metals from mined and recycled materials. A paper describing their results was recently published in\u00a0<\/span>Science Advances<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very hard to create a modern-day lithium-ion battery, an energy source on which we rely so heavily, without nickel and cobalt. Access to large quantities of both metals is critical for the clean energy transition,\u201d says Liu.<\/p>\n

Solvent extraction\u2019s limitations are more pronounced in countries\u2014including the United States\u2014where there are few mines that can be excavated for cobalt or nickel. These countries have begun to shift their attention to \u201curban mining\u201d\u2014recovering critical minerals from end-of-life lithium-ion batteries and electronic waste.<\/p>\n

The solvent extraction method doesn\u2019t work as effectively as electrowinning with end-of-life batteries because used batteries contain such small quantities of cobalt and nickel and because they also include multiple dissolved metals\u2014such as manganese, lithium, and sodium\u2014that can interfere with the solvent extraction process.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Yayuan Liu (L) and Tianchen Li (R)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cElectrowinning\u2019s edge in urban mining gives us a practical pathway to turn battery waste into a valuable resource for cobalt and nickel, while also helping the United States reduce its reliance on foreign supply chains,\u201d Liu says.<\/p>\n

The idea to use electrowinning to separate cobalt and nickel grew out of a collaboration with\u00a0<\/span>Michael Betenbaugh<\/a>, a ChemBE professor and ROSEI associate researcher, who was interested in making battery recycling more sustainable. The most common way to recover metals from electronic waste is to use mineral acids to solubilize the metal ions. The overall idea of the collaboration is to use bioacids \u2014organic acids made through fermentation using microbes \u2013 instead of mineral acids for the leaching process. By doing so, Liu\u2019s group made an unexpected discovery: The bioacids didn\u2019t just help dissolve the metals, they also changed the behavior of cobalt and nickel during the next step of the process, electrowinning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe tested different bioacids and discovered that when they interact with metal ions, they change their behavior and make the nickel and cobalt separation much more feasible,\u201d Li said.<\/p>\n

Among the bioacids the group studied, tartaric acid proved especially effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cTartaric acid forms a very special complex because it has two hydroxyl groups on its carbon chain,\u201d Li says. \u201cIt can create a di-nuclear complex, which maximizes the separation factor between cobalt and nickel. Other acids we tested didn\u2019t have that structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team demonstrated the process in their lab using model battery waste and is now expanding the method to test it on actual batteries and electronic waste streams that contain additional competing ions and more dilute metal concentrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re moving toward larger-scale systems and more complex waste materials,\u201d Liu said. \u201cOur goal is to demonstrate that this technology can work in realistic recycling scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article was originally posted by the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","class_list":["post-52516","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","news_categories-faculty","news_categories-postdoctoral","news_categories-research"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHopkins Researchers Develop Greener Method to Separate Cobalt and Nickel - Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/cobalt-and-nickel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hopkins Researchers Develop Greener Method to Separate Cobalt and Nickel - Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As demand for lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from electric vehicles to smartphones and grid-scale storage systems, increases, so too does the need for more cobalt and nickel, minerals that…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/news\/cobalt-and-nickel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-03-17T18:47:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/engineering.jhu.edu\/chembe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/li_liu_720.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"720\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"576\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Hopkins Researchers Develop Greener Method to Separate Cobalt and Nickel - 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