What is a lithium battery? What are the key issues facing the recycling of lithium batteries?

What is a lithium battery? A lithium battery is a type of battery that uses lithium metal or lithium alloy as the negative electrode material and uses a non-aqueous electrolyte solution. Lithium batteries can be roughly divided into two categories: lithium metal batteries and lithium batteries. Lithium batteries do not contain metallic lithium and are rechargeable. The fifth generation of rechargeable batteries, lithium metal batteries, was born in 1996, and its safety, specific capacity, self-discharge rate and performance-price ratio are superior to those of lithium batteries. Due to its own high-tech requirements, only a few companies in a few countries are processing this lithium metal battery. Lithium metal batteries are generally batteries that use manganese dioxide as the positive electrode material, metal lithium or its alloy metal as the negative electrode material, and use a non-aqueous electrolyte solution. The important components of lithium battery materials are: positive electrode material, negative electrode material, separator, and electrolyte. Electrolyte is generally prepared from raw materials such as high-purity organic solvents, electrolyte lithium salts, and necessary additives under certain conditions and in certain proportions. The electrolyte is used to conduct ions between the positive and negative electrodes of the lithium battery, which guarantees that the lithium battery can obtain the advantages of high voltage and high specific energy. More and more used lithium batteries are scrapped, and the key issues facing the recycling of lithium batteries are: 1. Retired batteries are more complicated and difficult to disassemble. Used power lithium battery packs include different types, design techniques, series and parallel groups, as well as diversified service time, use models and operating conditions. This causes inconvenience in disassembling the battery. Automated dismantling has high requirements for flexible configuration of processing lines and high disposal costs; manual dismantling affects the yield of battery recycling, and is also easy to cause battery short circuit and leakage, which may cause fire or explosion, and cause personal and property losses. 2. Retired batteries have poor consistency and low quality. The reuse of waste power lithium batteries must undergo quality testing, including safety assessment, cycle life detection, etc., and the batteries can be sorted and classified, and then reorganized before they can be reused. Otherwise, consistency cannot be guaranteed, but these detection equipment, detection costs, detection time, decomposition modeling, etc. will all add additional costs. If some problematic batteries are not detected and used again, it will also increase the safety risk of the entire battery system. 3. The cost of recycling and dismantling is high, and the profit point is low. A mature recycling system has not been established in China, and the power lithium battery recycling industry has not formed a scale effect. Due to the high cost of the recycling process, the investment exceeds the value of the battery. According to statistics, the cost of recycling and solving 1 ton of waste lithium iron phosphate power lithium-ion battery for a company is 8540 yuan, while the income from recycled materials is only 8110 yuan and the loss is 430 yuan. It is also not economical for energy storage. 4. The recycling policy lacks supervision and implementation is not in place. Although my country has issued policy documents to determine the extended system of processor responsibilities, and clarify the responsibilities of new energy vehicle processing companies, power battery processing companies, cascade battery processing companies, and scrap car recycling and dismantling companies, because the policy is not mandatory, In addition, the lack of a clear reward and punishment mechanism, coupled with the low economy of power lithium battery recycling and reuse, is currently unprofitable for entities related to power lithium batteries, and the enthusiasm for policy implementation is not high. Disclaimer: Some pictures and content of the articles published on this site are from the Internet. If there is any infringement, please contact to delete. Previous: Detailed explanation of the future development trend of lithium batteries for electric vehicles