Power lithium batteries, from ‘decommissioning’ to ‘regeneration’

Power lithium batteries, from

‘decommissioning’ to ‘regeneration’

Power battery is the core component of new energy vehicles. Today, the global new energy vehicle ownership exceeded 31.4 million. While the new energy vehicle industry is booming, the ‘decommissioning’ of the power batteries how to have better recycling, treatment?

Retired power batteries contain lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metals and chemicals. If the operation is not normalize and handled improperly, it is very easy to cause fire, explosion and other safety accidents. At the same time, heavy metals, harmful substances will also cause environmental pollution of soil, water, air and so on.

For the decommissioning of power battery processing and utilisation, at present there are mainly two ways of gradient utilisation and recycling.

1. 1. The gradient utilisation usually means that when the battery capacity is between 50% and 80%, recycling companies will dismantle and restructure the decommissioned power batteries, after which they will continue to serve as emergency power supply and energy storage equipment. Typical application scenarios are : 1, in the field of energy storage: photovoltaic/wind power generation storage system needs to cope with the instability of power output, retired batteries can provide buffer support; 2, low-speed transport: electric bicycles, low-speed electric vehicles, etc. to replace the more polluting lead-acid batteries, balancing environmental protection and economy. 3, Infrastructure: DC charging stations use retired batteries to meet short-term high power demand and reduce grid load.

1. 2. Recycling is generally used when the battery capacity is below 40 per cent. Recycling is aimed at lithium ion batteries that have completely failed or are severely degraded, and valuable metals such as lithium, cobalt and nickel are extracted through chemical/physical methods. The main technologies include: Hydrometallurgy: dissolving the battery and then separating the metals, with a lithium, nickel and cobalt recovery rate of over 90%. Pyrometallurgy: high-temperature smelting is suitable for lithium iron phosphate batteries, but energy consumption is high. Biological method: microbial extraction technology is in transition from laboratory to industrialisation, with significant cost advantages.

The industry generally believes that the power battery recycling industry is currently in a period of development, but at the same time there are really some pain points. New energy vehicle power battery standard recycling rate is not high, most of the used batteries have flowed to some wandering in the ‘grey zone’ of non-compliant enterprises. These ‘small workshop’ – non-compliant enterprises lack production qualifications and technology accumulation, and operate in a sloppy manner, with many safety and environmental risks. According to news reports, in a company specialising in wholesale lithium battery cells in South China, wasted lithium batteries recovered from different sources are disassembled and reassembled privately in messy plants with inadequate fire protection facilities, and then flow into the end market.

To achieve the quality and speed of the battery recycling industry, inseparable from the government and industry synergy. The government should be based on industrial landing, focusing on the improvement of regulations and strengthen the supervision of two key dimensions. Regulatory level, the need to build a systematic and comprehensive regulatory system, clearly defining the rights and obligations of the main participants. At the regulatory level, we need to integrate the regulatory power dispersed in various departments to create an all-round, multi-level regulatory network to regulate the order of the industry. The industry itself also needs to take the initiative to strengthen self-discipline in an important position.

Through the synergy of gradient utilisation and recycling, decommissioned power batteries will not only no longer be a burden on the environment, but will also be transformed into ‘urban mines’, which will promote the new energy automobile industry to move towards a truly green and sustainable development.

LYTH Battery is not only a supplier of lithium battery cells, but also a professional manufacturer of lithium battery modules and packs. We don’t use gradient utilisation battery types . No matter for individual cells, battery modules or packs, LYTH only use full new A grade cell types which has original testing report .

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