Amos - 22-4-2014 at 09:33
I recently acquired an old, and presumably broken (it was in the trash) Macbook Pro Lithium Ion battery. Being the curious fool that I am, I carefully
opened it up to reveal 6 tightly wrapped cells. Upon opening one of the cells I found it was made of a 4 foot long ribbon of what appears to be
aluminum foil coated in a dry black residue. Now according to an outside source, the reaction inside a battery of this type are as follows:
LiCoO2 + C ---> Li1-x CoO2+CLix
But seeing as this battery is permanently dead, I was lead to believe the reaction was messed up, possibly leading to the formation of any of the
following: Li2O, CoO, and CoO2.
My question for anyone that is more tech/electrochemisty-savvy than me, is whether there are some reactions I can carry out to produce lithium and/or
cobalt salts of even a limited purity. As an endnote, I've already immersed some of the ribbon from the battery in water and tried setting it on fire;
neither of them caused any kind of reaction, so it is doubtful that any elemental lithium is present.
[Edited on 22-4-2014 by No Tears Only Dreams Now]
elementcollector1 - 22-4-2014 at 09:38
If water resulted in no reaction, Li2O can't be present either, so it is likely to be present as LiCoO2 or either of the
products. Not knowing the chemistry of such a curious double salt, I would recommend dissolving in some acid and then adding some base... This might
precipitate Co(OH)2.
Brain&Force - 23-4-2014 at 15:06
I highly doubt cobalt dioxide could exist for long. Laptop batteries don't contain lithium metal, either - the technology is different from the
Energizer Lithium batteries. I don't know much about lithium-ion or lithium-polymer batteries.
Zyklon-A - 24-4-2014 at 08:12
Yeah, lithium metal batteries are not rechargeable, only lithium ion batteries are.