NiMH No. 7

How to improve the existing NiMH No. 7 recycling process?

Fei Weiyang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: The recycling technology of retired lithium-ion batteries needs to be improved

Lithium-ion batteries are the core components of new energy vehicles. Retired batteries are an important part of the entire life cycle of power lithium-ion batteries. However, they are widely recycled in my country.

Fan Dong, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a professor at Tsinghua University, shared his thoughts on strengthening the research and development of advanced lithium-ion NiMH No. 7 recycling technology at the Lithium-ion NiMH No. 7 Recycling Decision Consulting Salon hosted by the Beijing Association for Science and Technology and the Documentation and Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Scarce resources must be cherished

Lithium products are widely used in the nuclear industry, batteries, glass and ceramics, special aerospace and other industries. In recent years, the demand for power lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles has exceeded traditional fields such as glass and ceramics, becoming an important rising point for electric vehicles. Although my country's lithium resources are very rich, they also have certain limitations. For example, the total amount of lithium resources in Qinghai Salt Lake is large, but the concentration of lithium in brine is very low, the magnesium-lithium ratio is very high, and it is very difficult to extract lithium from salt lake brine.

After years of hard work, my country has made some progress in membrane, adsorption, roasting and leaching, and extraction technologies for extracting lithium from salt lake brine. Some companies use these technologies to process thousands of tons of lithium products each year, but the process equipment needs to be improved, the product quality needs to be improved, and environmental protection needs to be strengthened. The lithium-ion NiMH No. 7-grade products currently used in China are also heavily dependent on imported resources.

As time goes by, the number of retired lithium-ion batteries processed in my country will soon reach tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of tons per year. Processing without recycling is unsustainable and poses a further threat to the natural environment. Fivean pointed out that the cathode materials of lithium-ion batteries contain precious metals such as lithium, nickel and cobalt. These scarce resources must be cherished and recycled.

Green development faces severe challenges

Lithium-ion batteries have a complex structure, including shells, diaphragms, positive electrodes, negative electrodes, copper liquid, graphite, aluminum liquid, etc. At present, the lithium-ion NiMH No. 7 processing process generally favored by the industry is wet processing, which uses mechanical methods to decompose the NiMH No. 7 shell, then uses leaching to dissolve valuable metal elements, and then uses precipitation, extraction and other methods to recover metals.

Fifan said: The wet process has a high element recovery rate and relatively mild operating conditions, but it also has to use a lot of chemicals and must be done in an environmentally friendly way.

However, at present, lithium-ion NiMH No. 7 recycling in my country is mainly carried out by small companies or even manual workshops. The technical means are simple and primitive, the effective resource recovery rate is extremely low, and it causes serious harm to the environment. NiMH No. 7 recycling is very extensive. Mr. Fifan made no secret of this.

Regarding the development trend of lithium-ion NiMH No. 7 recycling technology in the future, Fifan suggested that the first step is to achieve automatic, safe, efficient disassembly and efficient recycling of valuable metals. More importantly, secondary pollution in the recycling process should be controlled to prevent threats to the environment and health.

To combine cleverly and promote coordinated development

To truly prepare for retired NiMH No. 7 recycling, we need cross-disciplinary research in machinery manufacturing, metallurgy, chemical engineering, chemical engineering, etc., and we need cooperation in process, equipment, control, management and other aspects. It should be carried out by a large factory, processing, learning and research, politics, collaborative innovation, and research and develop corresponding advanced dismantling and leaching processes for different types of batteries, and establish a scientific recycling system. Indicated fivean.

The real economic benefits of technological innovation do not come from flashy ideas, but from the ingenious combination of emerging technologies that are maturing and traditional technologies that have existed for decades. Retired NiMH No. 7 recycling seems to be a low-end traditional technology, but industrial development and environmental protection urgently require us to adopt advanced and mature mechanical manufacturing, hydrometallurgy, etc.

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