Analysis of Lithium Battery Recycling Market and Ion Battery Recycling Technology

Lithium batteries are generally regarded as environmentally friendly and pollution-free green batteries, but improper recycling of lithium batteries can also cause pollution. Although lithium batteries do not contain toxic heavy metals such as mercury, cadmium, and lead, the positive and negative electrode materials and electrolyte of the battery still have a greater impact on the environment and the human body. Lithium battery recycling market my country is currently a major battery processing and consumer country in the world, with annual battery consumption reaching 8 billion batteries, and waste batteries are generally treated by landfill, incineration, composting and other methods together with domestic waste. Large and urgent. If discarded lithium batteries are not systematically processed and recycled, they will seriously waste resources, pollute the environment and endanger human health. The huge market demand for lithium batteries, on the one hand, will lead to a large number of used batteries in the future. How to deal with these used lithium batteries to reduce their environmental impact is an urgent problem to be solved; on the other hand, in order to respond to the huge market demand, Manufacturers need to process a large number of lithium batteries to supply the market. Scrap lithium batteries contain a lot of metal resources such as cobalt (Co), lithium (Li), nickel (Ni), manganese (Mn), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), etc., including a variety of rare metal resources, cobalt It is a scarce strategic metal in our country, and it is important to meet the rising demand by importing it. Part of the metal content in waste lithium batteries is higher than that in natural ore. Therefore, in the case of increasingly scarce processing resources, recycling and processing waste batteries has a certain economic value. Lithium battery recycling technology The recycling methods of lithium batteries can be divided into three categories: dry recycling, wet recycling and biological recycling. 1. Dry recovery Dry recovery refers to the direct recovery of materials or valuable metals without using media such as solutions. Among them, the important methods used are physical separation and high temperature pyrolysis. 2. Wet recovery The wet recovery process is to crush and dissolve the waste batteries, and then use appropriate chemical reagents to selectively separate the metal elements in the leaching solution to produce high-grade cobalt metal or lithium carbonate, etc., and directly recover them. The wet recycling process is more suitable for recycling waste lithium batteries with relatively single chemical composition, and its equipment investment cost is low, and it is suitable for the recovery of small and medium-sized waste lithium batteries. Therefore, this method is currently widely used. 3. Biological recovery Mishra et al. used inorganic acids and acidophilic Thiobacillus ferrooxidans to extract metals from waste lithium batteries, and used S and ferrous ions (Fe2+) to generate metabolites such as H2SO4 and Fe3+ in the leaching medium. These metabolites help dissolve metals in spent batteries. The cost of bioleaching is low, the recovery efficiency is high, pollution and consumption are low, the impact on the environment is also small, and the microorganisms can be reused. However, the cultivation of high-efficiency microorganisms is difficult, the treatment cycle is long, and the control of the leaching conditions are several major problems in this method. 4. Combined recycling methods Waste lithium battery recycling processes have their own advantages and disadvantages. At present, there have been researches on recycling methods that combine and optimize multiple processes to give full play to the advantages of various recycling methods and maximize economic benefits. Waste lithium battery recycling technology * Biological smelting method: Use the metabolism of microorganisms to achieve selective leaching of cobalt, lithium and other elements. *Direct electrode repair technology: Separate the electrode material by destroying the binder and recover it. *Synthesis of leaching solution electrode material: the leaching solution directly participates in the chemical reaction to generate lithium cobalt oxide electrode material. Disclaimer: Some pictures and content of articles published on this site are from the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete. Previous post: How long is the service life of lead-acid batteries and lithium battery packs?