Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The original title: "Professor of Central South University breaks through battery recycling: a profit of 10 yuan per kilogram, iron and phosphorus can also be reused."

It is not just whitelist companies that benefit.

The battery recycling industry, which has been complained about not making money, is about to usher in a breakthrough.

Recently, professors at Central South University have developed an efficient and green high-temperature treatment scheme to recover waste lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP), which can not only improve the recovery of lithium, but also iron and phosphorus.

Compared with the traditional process, the new recycling method can achieve a profit of up to US $1.44 per kilogram of waste LFP batteries.

In the past two years, the outbreak of new energy vehicles has also spawned a new blue ocean business-battery recycling. According to the regulations, if the power battery capacity decays to less than 80% of the rated capacity, it will be decommissioned and then forced to be recycled. The agency conservatively estimates that the power battery recycling market is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan in 2030.

Source: bang Pu cycle, whether it is Ningde era, BYD, Grimm and other giants, or some small and medium-sized power battery recycling enterprises, have begun to lay out, trying to lock in this potential market ahead of time. According to Tianyan survey data, there are more than 35000 "power battery recycling" related enterprises in China.

However, power battery recycling is still in the primary stage of the market, and there are still many objective factors such as price upside down and immature technology. Power battery recycling is also called a hot gold mine.

With the birth of new technology, this huge gold mine began to be fully exposed.

01. Improving fire recovery it is well known that cathode materials are the most expensive battery components, accounting for about 40% of the total battery cost, so it is more necessary to recycle cathode materials than other materials.

At present, in the market, there are generally two kinds of waste battery recycling methods, which are wet recycling and fire recycling.

Source: wet recovery of Tianqi lithium industry usually uses a large number of acidic or alkaline solutions to dissolve waste batteries and then recover precious metal elements through precipitation for a long time.

However, wet recovery has many disadvantages, first of all, the time period is relatively long, and then the waste water and waste gas should be retreated after the completion of metallurgy, which greatly increases the operating cost and even exceeds the value of the obtained lithium compounds.

The fire recovery, as the name implies, is recovered by high-temperature calcination, although the high-temperature melting process is simple and the productivity is high. However, the energy consumption in the calcination process is high, and the recovery rate of lithium is very limited.

In addition, in the process of pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy is also needed. Its main role in the recovery process is to convert the components in the battery into products conducive to subsequent hydrometallurgical separation or recovery. Therefore, the complete recovery of waste lithium batteries can not be achieved by pyrometallurgy alone.

For now, neither of these methods is suitable for large-scale battery recycling.

Source: the recycling scheme of waste LFP batteries developed by Green Mei Central South University is a further improvement to the original pyrometallurgical method.

It is worth mentioning that the research group headed by Zhang Jiafeng of Central South University has been focusing on the research of power battery recycling.

Professor Zhang Jiafeng was born in December 1984 in Shengzhou, Zhejiang Province. he is a postdoctoral student in chemical engineering and technology and a professor in the School of Metallurgy and Environment of Central South University. his main research interests are the harmless disposal and recycling of solid wastes, lithium battery materials and precursors and metallurgical environmental engineering.

His research group has published more than 80 academic papers in domestic and foreign journals and applied for more than 150 national invention patents, including more than 50 authorized national invention patents.

As early as a few months ago, his research group announced the feasibility of repairing and reusing the cathode materials in waste lithium iron phosphate batteries.

Source: in the experimental paper, he thinks that by adding an appropriate amount of lithium source to reverse supplement lithium in situ, it may be effective to repair and regenerate waste LFP cathode materials.

Through a large number of experimental analysis, this method can effectively regenerate LFP cathode materials, and can also show a capacity of up to 95.30% electrochemical performance after 500 cycles.

Compared with the traditional battery recycling process with a profit of 10 yuan per kilogram, solid sodium sulfate is mainly added to the waste LFP recovery scheme proposed by Zhang Jiafeng's team, which is a colorless and transparent crystal, very similar to salt, but inedible, and is generally used as a desiccant.

The specific process is that after the discharge, disassembly and separation of the waste lithium iron phosphate battery, the positive active material LFP is selected. The mixture of LFP and sodium sulfate is ground evenly, and then calcined in air at high temperature.

Source: during this process, Li (lithium) is selectively extracted from the olivine-shaped structure of LFP to form a water-soluble Na "SO". Fe (iron) and P (boron) are converted into subsidiary products Fe "P" O "and Na" P "O".

The roasted product is then treated with water, and the Li element is extracted according to the different solubility of each substance in water.

They found that when the temperature reached 800 ℃, the maximum Li extraction rate of 99.22% was obtained after full combustion for 3 hours, while the extraction rate of P element was 0.11%. The extraction rate of Fe reached 0.03%.

Compared with the traditional technology, it can not only extract Li elements selectively, but also recycle Fe and P again.

They also analyzed the actual usefulness of this research technology and calculated the costs and benefits generated by 1.00kg waste LFP batteries.

Source: according to them, compared with the hydrometallurgical process, lithium is converted into other substances with similar principles and costs of $2.59 and $2.63, respectively.

It is worth noting that only a single by-product of hydrometallurgy is recovered in the process, and this experiment will also bring a variety of high-value by-products, bringing an added value of US $4.07, which is 40.3% higher than that of hydrometallurgy. Moreover, this method also simplifies the complex acid leaching process in the later stage of hydrometallurgy and greatly simplifies the process.

This means that compared with traditional methods, this recycling scheme can achieve a high profit of US $1.44 from 1 kilogram of waste LFP batteries.

03, benefit not only whitelist enterprises when new energy vehicles as an important starting point to achieve the double carbon goal, power battery recycling system will be an important part of the sustainable development of new energy vehicles, will inevitably become a tuyere.

Since 2022, lithium iron phosphate batteries have become the main force of decommissioned batteries. Data show that decommissioned power batteries will reach 137.4GWh in 2025, while 960000 tons of waste batteries will need to be recycled.

And according to Anxin Securities, the global nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese recycling market will be 15.74 billion yuan in 2021, and it is expected to reach 77.71 billion yuan by 2025, with an average compound growth rate of 49.1% from 2021 to 2025.

Source: KS not long ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a list of enterprises in line with the "New Energy vehicle waste Power Battery Comprehensive Utilization Industry Standard conditions" for public consultation. There are a total of 41 whitelist enterprises in this batch. Together with the three batches of previously released list, the number of domestic power battery recycling whitelist enterprises will reach 88.

However, compared with these enterprises, there are still more small workshops that are not on the whitelist.

For users, a compact new energy vehicle with a starting price of about 150000 yuan has been in operation for a few years, but the scrapped and recycled price is only 3000-4000 yuan, which also gives waste battery manufacturers the opportunity to enter the market.

These small workshops seize the recycling market through low-cost and high-price recycling. It is estimated that less than 25% of retired power batteries flow into whitelist companies.

And the recycling method of these small workshops is also simple and rough, in order to save costs, they directly wear insulated gloves and begin to dismantle violently. This process will also produce huge dust and electrolyte pollution. In addition, they will be reused according to their quality, and the batteries in many electric toys come from new energy vehicles.

Source: Green Energy this means that the power battery recycling industry chain is still immature. Some industry insiders say that in the power battery recycling industry, the recovery rate of lithium resources in waste power batteries basically hovers between 1% and 2%, and very few can be fully utilized.

Zeng Yuqun, chairman of Ningde Times, once boasted that most of the materials in the battery could be reused. "at present, our recovery rate of nickel, cobalt and manganese has reached 99.3%, and lithium has reached more than 90%."

However, this claim was quickly questioned, and Tianqi Lithium replied, "this recovery laboratory should be able to do it, but it has not been seen commercially."

In theory, the recovery rate of lithium can reach more than 90%, but the biggest challenges of power battery recycling are difficult recycling, high recovery costs, and imperfect market mechanisms.

Compared with previous technical solutions, this technological breakthrough of Central South University does not require much complex reaction environment, greatly simplifies the process, and the catalytic reagents in the reaction process are also more common, which means that it will be much easier to achieve commercial landing.

And once this scheme is put on the ground for commercial use, it will not only benefit those whitelist companies.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Super Electric Lab (ID:SuperEV-Lab), author: Wang Lei, Editor: Zaizhou

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