Battery Recycling in China

Current Situation for Recycling of Lithium Iron Phosphate Power Batteries in China

The new energy automobile market has been flourishing since 2014, and new energy vehicles appeared as early as the 2008 Beijing Olympics. According to the relevant standards, the scrap power battery market has begun to form. It is expected that by 2018, China's scrap lithium iron phosphate power battery recycling market will begin to take shape, with a cumulative scrap power batteries of 12.08GWH and a cumulative scrap volume of about 172,500 tons. According to estimates, the corresponding recycling market created by the recovery of metals such as cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium, iron, and aluminum from waste power lithium batteries in 2018 will reach 5.323 billion yuan, reaching 10.1 billion yuan in 2020, and until 2023, the scrap lithium iron phosphate power battery market will reach 25 billion yuan.

How to recycle scrap lithium iron phosphate battery?

1. Echelon utilization and raw material recovery

For retired power lithium batteries, those who take the step-by-step use road are materials recovery after the step-by-step use; direct material recovery is too small batches, no history can be checked, safety monitoring is not qualified, etc.

2. Method for extracting valuable metals from cathode materials

The current recycling of power lithium batteries does not actually achieve the full recycling of various materials on the entire battery. The types of positive electrode materials mainly include: lithium cobaltate, lithium manganate, ternary lithium, lithium iron phosphate，etc.

There are mainly three methods of recycling scrap lithium batteries: physical, chemical, and biological. Compared with other methods, hydrometallurgy is considered an ideal recovery method due to its low energy consumption, high recovery efficiency and high product purity.

① Physical method

The physical method uses a physical chemical reaction process to process a lithium iron phosphate battery. Common physical and chemical treatment methods are crushing flotation and mechanical grinding.

② Chemical method

The chemical method is a method for processing the lithium battery by a chemical reaction process, and is generally divided into two methods: pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy.

③ Biological method

The biometallurgical method is also currently under study, which uses the metabolic process of microbial fungi to achieve the selective leaching of metallic elements such as cobalt and lithium. The biological method has low energy consumption, low cost, microorganisms can be reused, and pollution is small; however, the requirements for culturing microorganisms are strict, the cultivation time is long, and the extraction efficiency is low.

The process needs further improvement.

Development prospects of lithium battery recycling technology:

Cascade utilization and dismantling are two important ways to recycle decommissioned lithium batteries.

(1) The cascade utilization can achieve the secondary application of retired power lithium batteries in the field of energy storage. The downstream application space is huge, and it is also a recycling method that is supported by the government policy. Automobile companies and battery factories have inherent advantages, but also face the predicament of higher recycling costs for retired batteries. Meanwhile, this method has extremely high requirements for battery consistency. Some demonstration projects are running currently;

（2）Dismantling is the major method for recycling of decommissioned lithium batteries. Among them, wet recycling is the most commercialized. Battery manufacturers such as

GEM, CALB, and BRUNP have already had their own layouts. Against the background of the price increase ofraw materials, locking upstream raw material prices through recycling + production will be an important way for battery manufacturers to reduce costs in the future.