The growing environmental concern, associated with the continuous increase in electronic equipment production, has induced the development of new technologies to recycle the large number of spent batteries generated in recent years. The amount of spent lithium ion batteries (LIBs) tends to grow over the next years. These batteries are composed by valuable metals, such as Li, Co, Cu and Al, which can be recovered. Thus, the present work is carried out in two main steps: In the first step, a characterization of the LIBs is performed. Batteries from different brands and models are dismantled and their components characterized regarding to the chemical composition and main phases. In the second step, a sample of LIBs is shredded and the different materials present are separated by spouted bed elutriation. The results show that spouted bed elutriation is a simple and inexpensive way to obtain the separation of the different materials (polymers, metals, active electrode materials) present in spent LIBs. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.