The demand for lithium-ion batteries has been forecast to increase nearly 7-fold before the end of the decade, with the bulk of this demand deriving from mobility applications such as electric vehicles (McKinsey & Co., 2023). However, there are several issues facing the current supply chain, including the potential environmental and social impacts of extracting the raw materials needed for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. As a result, the process of recycling lithium-ion batteries has received a large amount of attention over the past few years. As recycled materials begin to contribute a larger share to the pool of raw materials available for the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries, the availability of tools used to better understand and optimize both the recycling process and its final products will become invaluable.

This work will discuss two different techniques used at two stages of the recycling process. First, the use of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) for purity analysis of important lithium salts will be investigated. In the second part, thermogravimetric analysis coupled to infrared spectroscopy (TG-IR) will be exploited as a solution for better understanding residual electrolyte present in black mass