Patent ID: 11959151
Assignee: SUMITOMO METAL MINING CO., LTD.
Field: Materials, metallurgy (Chemistry)
Classification: CPC C  H  Y | IPC C

Claim 0:
1. A separation method for separating copper, nickel and cobalt from an alloy obtained by melting and reducing a waste lithium ion battery, the method comprising
producing the alloy in the form of an alloy powder, the alloy powder containing a copper metal, a nickel metal, and a cobalt metal;
adding a sulfurization agent to the alloy powder to establish a state of the sulfurization agent and the alloy powder coexisting;
wherein the sulfurization agent is one or more selected from the group consisting of elemental sulfur, hydrogen sulfide gas, sodium hydrogen sulfide and sodium sulfide; and
bringing the sulfurization agent and the alloy powder coexisting into contact with hydrochloric acid whereby the nickel metal and the cobalt metal are leached from the alloy powder and the copper metal contained in the alloy powder is sulfurized by the sulfurization agent to obtain a solid containing copper sulfide and a leachate containing the nickel existing as an ion and the cobalt existing as an ion.