In recent years, the widespread usage of lithium batteries had led to a large amount of waste. Therefore, recovery of cobalt from waste ithium batteries was the most economic benefits. The purpose of this study was to compare three different methods which were conventional, microwave heating and ultrasonic heating on leaching process. Using 2M sulfuric acid, reducing agent proportion of 2 vol%, temperature of 80 ℃, reaction time of 5 minutes and the ratio of solid-liquid was 25g/L. The cobalt cobalt was up to 100% from the leaching liquor under microwave heating system and reaction time would be greatly reduced about 12 times, compared to traditional methods. For the separation of manganese, 0.5 mol L−1 KMnO4 solution was drop-wise added to the leaching liquor to selectively precipitate Mn2+ under optimized experimental conditions. And about 97.65% Mn2+ is precipitated at equilibrium pH = 2.0, MRMK = 1.5 and reaction time of 60 minute. Therefore, the advisable equilibrium pH would be 5, O:A=1 at room temperature, the Co2+ was extracted by D2EHPA and then about 93.48% Co2+ can be extracted. The stripping was carried out at the 5M of hydrochloric acid, reaction time of 10 minute. The solution that contained the cobalt was metalized by electrolytic refining, and the final purity of the cobalt metal was up to 98.07%.

Microwave system, Ultrasonic, Waste lithium batteries, Cobalt