Environmental protection and harmless disposal of lithium-ion batteries meet the requirements of sustainable development. A large number of lithium-ion batteries have entered the market, and the recycling and reuse of used lithium-ion batteries has also become a major challenge for the industry.

The recycling technology of waste lithium-ion batteries is to separate valuable components in waste lithium-ion batteries according to their respective physical and chemical properties. Generally speaking, the entire recovery process is divided into 4 parts: (1) pretreatment part; (2) electrode material repair; (3) leaching of valuable metals; (4) chemical purification.

In the recycling process, according to different extraction processes, the recycling technology of lithium-ion batteries can be divided into three categories:

1. Dry recycling technology

Dry recycling mainly includes mechanical separation and high temperature pyrolysis (or pyrometallurgy). The dry recovery process is relatively short, and the recovery is not very specific. It is the preliminary stage to realize the separation and recovery of metals. Important refers to the method of directly recovering materials or valuable metals without using media such as solutions. It is important to use physical separation and high-temperature pyrolysis methods to crush the battery for coarse screening, or to decompose and remove organic matter at high temperature for further processing. Element recycling.

2. Wet recycling technology

Wet recovery technology is more complicated, but the recovery rate of each valuable metal is relatively high. It is currently an important technology for processing waste nickel-hydrogen batteries and lithium-ion batteries. Wet recovery technology uses various acid and alkaline solutions as the transfer medium to transfer metal ions from the electrode material to the leaching solution, and then through ion exchange, precipitation, adsorption and other means, the metal ions are removed from the form of salts, oxides, etc. Extract from the solution.

3. Biorecycling technology

Biological recycling technology has the characteristics of low cost, low pollution and reusability, which is the ideal direction for the development of lithium-ion battery recycling technology in the future. Biological recovery technology is important to use microbial leaching to convert the useful components of the system into soluble compounds and selectively dissolve them to obtain a solution containing effective metals, to achieve the separation of target components from impurity components, and finally to recover valuable lithium and other valuable components. metal. At present, the research on bio-recycling technology has just started, and then it will gradually solve the problems of the cultivation of high-efficiency strains, the long cycle, and the control of leaching conditions.