By 2030, the global lithium-ion battery demand surge battery recycling market value or as high as $ 18 billion

　　Author ：Iflowpower – Portable Power Station Supplier

The world is now more than 500,000 tons of abandoned lithium battery per year, most of which derived from small electronic products. However, with the world to the electric economic economy, it is expected that by 2030, the demand for lithium batteries will increase by 10 times, mostly for electric vehicles, and the number of abandoned batteries will also increase. Many industry insiders believe that abandoned lithium batteries are both a major environmentally friendly issue that needs to be solved, and also represents new opportunities, can replace the current vulnerable and controversial supply chain with a "recycling system", this new system is manufactured using recyclable materials Battery.

It is estimated that by 2030, the market that only recovering the lithium-ion battery may create $ 18 billion in value, far higher than $ 1.5 billion in 2019. Because this market is very bright, including Amazon, Panasonic and many start-ups, lithium electronic battery recycling business is targeted.

The startup of the US market is Redwoodmaterials, which is the latest joint venture for Teslabel JB Strabel JB Strabel (JBstraubel). Since 2017, the company has established two factories, currently dealing with all discard and defective batteries from Panasonic and Tesla Factory. Redwoodmaterials recently worked with Amazon to handle batteries from this retail giant.

In the end, RedwoodMaterials can reclaim 95% to 98% of nickel, cobalt, aluminum, graphite and more than 80% of lithium in the battery. Most of these materials are sold back to Panasonic to make new Tesla batteries. Joint founder and Executive Chairman Tim Johnston created Li-cycle in a similar manner, the company's business structure is mainly established around the "center and spoke" mode.

Li-cycle intends to collect the battery in the local "spoke" facility, divided into three parts: plastic housing, mixed metal (such as foil) and battery core active materials. Li-cycle can be sold directly, or they transport to a center of "hub" factory, soaking it in liquid at room temperature to extract 90% to 95% of metal. Li-cycle currently has two "spoke" facilities running, located in Ontario, Ontario, Canada and Rochester, New York, USA, a total of 10,000 tons of lithium-ion batteries per year.

Like RedwoodMaterials, the company hopes to expand as soon as possible, and has raised about 50 million US dollars. But the future, the researchers pointed out that the long-term profit margin of the recovery of the battery at an atomic decomposition mode may become extremely thin. After all, the chemical structure of the battery is changing every year, such as Panasonic's Cobalt content in Tesla Battery sharply 60% in 2012 to 2018.

These changes may require constant adjustment of the recycling process, and it will also reduce the profit. More effective ways may be to recover batteries at a higher level, use their larger molecular structure, not atoms. Chemist, battery research company ontechnology founder Steve Slop (Steveesloop) compares the battery as a apartment building.

Remove the wood and bricks with it, why not refurbish? Slop hopes to soak the active substance in the battery in a lithium-rich cylinder, so that they return to the original state. In addition to technology, expanding the scale will be the main challenges of all recycling initiatives. In the laboratory, the battery is relatively easy to change the battery.

But how to collect, transport, classify, disassemble, processing, and redistribution, millions of tons of materials is not so. Netease Technology.