LR1130 battery.Lithium battery recycling technology and recycling status

　　Lithium battery recycling technology and recycling status. Environmentally friendly and harmless disposal of lithium batteries meets the requirements of sustainable development. A large number of lithium-ion batteries have entered the market, and the recycling and reuse of used lithium-ion batteries has also become a major challenge for the industry.

　　What are the technical means for recycling lithium batteries?

　　There are two typical follow-up paths for lithium battery recycling, echelon utilization or direct material recycling.

　　1. Ladder utilization and raw material recycling

　　Retired power lithium batteries are reused in a tiered manner, with materials recycled after tiered utilization; direct material recycling is done in batches that are too small, have no history to check, or fail safety monitoring, etc.

　　The pursuit of economic benefits is the driving force for corporate and social behavior. It stands to reason that through step-by-step utilization, until the usable value of the lithium battery is reduced below the maintenance cost, and then raw materials are recycled, the value of the battery can be maximized. But the actual situation is that the traceability of early power batteries is poor, and the quality and models are uneven. The risk of secondary utilization of early-stage batteries is high, and the cost of eliminating risks is high. Therefore, it can be said that in the early stages of power battery recycling, the destination of batteries is most likely to be raw material recycling.

　　2. Extraction method of valuable metals from cathode materials

　　The current recycling of power lithium batteries does not actually achieve the comprehensive recycling and reuse of all types of materials on the entire battery. The types of cathode materials mainly include: lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganate, ternary lithium, lithium iron phosphate, etc.

　　The cost of battery cathode materials accounts for more than 1/3 of the cost of a single battery. Since the negative electrode currently uses more carbon materials such as graphite, lithium titanate Li4Ti5O12 and silicon carbon negative electrode Si/C are rarely used, so the current battery recycling technology is mainly targeted at It is the recycling of battery cathode materials.

　　The recycling methods of used lithium batteries mainly include physical methods, chemical methods and biological methods. Compared with other methods, hydrometallurgy is considered an ideal recycling method due to its low energy consumption, high recycling efficiency and high product purity.

　　3. Hydrometallurgy

　　Hydrometallurgy is a method that uses appropriate chemical reagents to selectively dissolve the cathode materials in used lithium-ion batteries and separate the metal elements in the leachate. The hydrometallurgical process is more suitable for recycling waste lithium batteries with a relatively single chemical composition. It can be used alone or in combination with high-temperature metallurgy. It has low equipment requirements and low processing costs. It is a very mature processing method and is suitable for small and medium-sized enterprises. Large-scale recycling of used lithium-ion batteries.

　　4. Pyrometallurgy

　　Pyrometallurgy, also known as incineration or dry metallurgy, removes organic binders from electrode materials through high-temperature incineration, while causing oxidation-reduction reactions of metals and their compounds to recover low-boiling-point metals and compounds in the form of condensation. Its compounds are recovered by screening, pyrolysis, magnetic separation or chemical methods to recover the metal in the slag. Pyrometallurgy has low requirements on the composition of raw materials and is suitable for large-scale processing of more complex lithium batteries.

　　Current status of lithium battery recycling

　　At this stage, my country's waste lithium battery recycling system is not yet complete, and recycling technology and business models have not yet reached mature standards. At present, problems such as immature utilization technology, imperfect acquisition network, imperfect management measures, and inadequate support policies are still plaguing my country's lithium battery recycling industry, and the business model and profit model have yet to be explored.

　　The imperfect system of secondary utilization is still the biggest problem currently facing the recycling field of used lithium batteries. There is currently no clear standard for the extent to which the battery capacity can be used in the next step, and the level at which it cannot be used in the next step and needs to enter the recycling process.

　　Currently, there are only a handful of high-quality lithium iron phosphate batteries that can be used in early stage power batteries, and the rest of the batteries, including ternary batteries, are of no use value. After being used for a period of time, it is difficult for ternary lithium batteries to ensure the uniformity of the electrochemical properties of the materials inside the battery, so there are safety risks when used in echelon applications. If the battery pack is disassembled, the cost will be greatly increased. It is valuable only if the battery pack is directly applied without disassembling the battery pack.

　　Finally, I would like to remind everyone that the reuse of used power lithium batteries must go through quality testing, including safety assessment, cycle life testing, etc. The cells are sorted and graded and reorganized before they can be reused. Otherwise, consistency cannot be guaranteed.

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