Pulsed millifluidic extraction process for battery metal recovery

The rapid expansion of electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage systems has triggered a critical shortage of transition metals, highlighting the urgent need for highly efficient battery recycling technologies. While hydrometallurgy is the industry standard, its productivity is constrained by a fundamental trade-off between mass transfer kinetics and phase separation efficiency. To resolve this, we introduce a “pulsed millifluidic solvent extraction” (PMSE) platform optimized for the high-throughput recovery of manganese, cobalt, and nickel.

By applying controlled oscillatory flow within millimetric channels, the PMSE system induces chaotic advection. This mechanism effectively overcomes the diffusion-limited bottlenecks typical of laminar microfluidic systems. Furthermore, the milliscale geometry generates a droplet size distribution that promotes spontaneous coalescence. This eliminates the prolonged settling times and emulsion stabilization issues that have historically prevented the industrial scale-up of conventional microfluidics.

The PMSE architecture achieves a 99.8% recovery efficiency with high elemental purity, while simultaneously reducing the residual organic phase in the aqueous solution by 40%. By bridging the gap between microfluidic interfacial precision and industrial-scale throughput, this platform provides a scalable, low-carbon solution to secure the critical minerals required for a sustainable energy transition.