Feasibility of Expired Waste Aspirin for Use as Lithium-Ion Battery Anode

The expired waste medicines would result in the waste of the resource and the environment pollution if they were not reasonably disposed. Although the expired medicines are not continuously used for the clinical therapy of the diseases anymore, there still exist the non-medical values within the expired medicines. Therefore, it is urgent to reasonably reutilize the expired medicines. For this purpose, the non-medical values of the expired waste Aspirin as the anode material in lithium-ion battery were exploited for the first time. The microstructure and element component of the expired waste Aspirin powders were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy ( 1 H-NMR), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR); furthermore, the corresponding electrochemical performances were also measured by the methods of galvanostatic charge/discharge and cyclic voltammetry (CV). The results showed that the expired waste Aspirin powders consisted of many rod-like nanoparticles and the effective component remained acetylsalicylic acid. Especially, the expired-Aspirin-based anode delivered the initial specific discharge capacity of 342.9 mAh/g and the reversible specific discharge capacity of 330.3 mAh/g even after 450 cycles. These satisfactory results would shed a new light on the reuse of the expired waste medicines as the energy materials and open a new avenue to the cyclic economy and sustainable development.