Norway is building a lithium-ion battery recovery factory battery recycling is imminent

　　Author ：Iflowpower – Portable Power Station Supplier

Norwegian lithium-ion battery recycling factory is under construction, initially focusing on electric vehicle (EV) batteries, but the company's CEO said that it will also be able to handle fixed energy storage systems (ESS) batteries. The plant will open this year later, with an annual production capacity of 8,000 tons of EV battery modules, from Norwegian Materials Processing Company Hydro and Headquarters in Swedish Lithium Battery manufacturing startup company Joint venture Hydrovolt Construction. Hydrovolt CEO Frederikandresen said, his company is very happy to "properly start" construction renewable power battery recycling factory.

Hydrovolt aims to recover several types of lithium-ion batteries. Partners HYDRO and NORTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHVOLT have investing 120 million Norwegian ($ 1,394 million) to build a factory with high degree of automation and can be smoothed and classified. Hydrovolt also won 43.

5 million Norwegian funds from Norway Government Enova, which supports cleaning energy and climate programs. The battery will be provided by BatteriRetur, and Batteriretur has collected and recycled the battery from Norway, and a factory has a factory near Fredrikstad's new Hydrovolt plant. BatteriRetur will also operate the plant, while Hydrovolt operations will be "closely combined with Hydro and Northvolt": Northvolt is currently manufacturing battery manufacturing when building dozens of ports in Sweden and Germany, aiming to serve 25% of power generation in Europe.

The total demand of lithium batteries mainly includes automotive applications, including fixed applications. At the same time, hydraulic power generation has more than 100 years in fertilizer, aluminum and hydropower and other industries. Hydroelectric will recover and reuse the aluminum in the battery and battery group, Hydrovolt will absorb cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel from the "black block" produced by wet metallurgy.

The battery manufacturer will then reuse these materials or sell them. At the end of last year, there were news that Japanese Electronics manufacturers were San Panasonic and Equinor (formerly Norwegian National Petroleum) signed the memorandum of understanding to establish a "green battery business" in Norway. Another new company FreyRbattery is seeking to establish a lithium battery super factory in the country and said today that it is looking for a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Urban Mining" is critical to the sustainable battery industry Andresen tells Energy-Storage.News, Norway is one of the fastest countries in the world's electric vehicles, and Hydrovolt "naturally begins with the electric car battery and module". Andresen said: "Norway will be one of the earliest EV batteries that use life-ended EV battery recyclable battery market.

But we can also recycle batteries from ESS and other applications, such as recycling batteries from the shipping department in the facilities of our construction, and we will also use the available capacity from other markets and department to purchase batteries. "Anderson said that people expect the battery and recycling of the battery in the energy storage system" Of course, will grow significantly over time ". Interviewers also ask if the battery can be used in the battery or from the EV department for fixed application, and vice versa.

Anderson said: "The materials extracted from electric car batteries are used for other uses . this is also the field we are studying. This can be a pure recovery material for battery production, or it can be reused for certain components in the battery.

There have been some reused projects in Norway, where there is a certain potential. "HYDROVOLT CEO said that the EU adopts new battery regulations will increase the sense of responsibility and transparency of the European battery supply chain, and will introduce standards for sustainability and CO2 emissions, which reuses the overall value of the battery from a battery. Negotiable.

Apply another one. He said that the regulation will also support reused reuse at a certain extent. "From the perspective of the environment, urban mining is critical to ensuring that the materials used in the battery once again, our goal is to play their own role to achieve this goal," Anderson said.

In order to make Hydrovolt a "one-stop store" of the lithium-ion battery, the CEO said that the facility can be replicated elsewhere, and "will explore and consider other places over time". We are very excited about building renewable energy battery recycling plants. We will use 2021 to further explore how we provide support for OEMs and other participants to achieve carbon dioxide friendly recycling.

Commercial recycling of lithium-ion batteries, including re-packaged batteries for the second use, is expected to become a big business, but so far, Li-cycle is in China and the United States in Ontario, Canada and New York. The only commercial recycling plant. South Korea.

At the same time, for the European lithium battery manufacturing, it has passed a few days, and the EU approves $ 2.9 billion ($ 3.5 billion) national aid funds for Member States to support projects in their country.

Finland has just announced a National battery strategy to use the raw materials available in their territory. The importance of battery recovery With the popularity of electric vehicles, the explosive growth of the explosive, and there is a pile of waste lithium-ion batteries for these vehicles. Industry analysts predict that by 2020, only about 500,000 tons of waste lithium-ion batteries will be generated in China.

By 2030, the world will reach 2 million tons per year. If the trend of currently handling these used batteries remains unchanged, even if the lithium ion battery can be recovered, most of these batteries may endfurn them. These popular power boxes contain valuable metals and other materials that can be recycled, processed and reused.

But today very few recycling. For example, according to the Australian Federal Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIro) Naomij.Boxall, in Australia, only 2-3% of lithium-ion batteries are collected and sent to overseas recycling.

The EU and the US recovery (less than 5%) have not much higher. "Lithium-ion battery recovery is not a widely recognized practice," said Lindal.gaines of the Agong National Laboratory.

Gaines is an expert in materials and life cycle analysis. He said that the reasons include technical limits, economic barriers, logistics issues and regulatory gaps. All of these issues have become a classic "chicken and egg" problem.

Since the lack of large-scale economic recovery is lacking in the lithium ion battery industry, the battery researchers and manufacturers have not focused on improving recyclability. Instead, they are committed to reducing costs and increasing battery life and charging capacity. Moreover, since the researchers have only achieved moderate progress in improving the recycling, relatively small lithium-ion batteries are finally recovered.

Most batteries that have been recycled are similar to the high temperature melting and extraction (or smelting) process used in the mining industry. These operations are carried out in large commercial facilities, such as Asia, Europe and Canada, need a lot of energy. These factories have high construction and operating costs and require advanced equipment to handle harmful emissions generated during the smelting process.

Although the cost is high, these plants cannot recover all valuable battery materials. So far, most of the work that improves lithium-ion battery recovery is concentrated in a relatively small academic research team, these research groups are usually independent. But things began to change.

After the electric cars and the unwilling portable electronic equipment aging, there will soon have a large number of waste lithium-based batteries, and the new battery recycling technology is commercialized. More and more scientists begin to study this issue, expanding the graduate students and postdoctoral teams receiving receiving battery recycling training. In addition, some batteries, manufacturing and recycling experts have begun to form large, multi-faceted partnerships to solve the urgent problem.

The benefits of battery recycling battery experts and environmentalists provide a number of reasons for recovering lithium-ion batteries. Recycled materials can be used to make new batteries, thereby reducing manufacturing costs. At present, these materials take more than half of the battery costs.

In recent years, the prices of two most common cathode metal cobalt and nickel (most expensive ingredients) fluctuate. Cobalt and nickel current market prices are approximately $ 27,500 per metric and $ 12,600 per metric ton, respectively. In 2018, the price of cobalt exceeds $ 90,000 per metric.

In many types of lithium-ion batteries, these metals and lithium and manganese concentration exceed the concentration in natural ore, so that the waste battery is similar to a high concentrated ore. If you can recover these metals from the waste battery than a larger cost and more economical than natural ore, the price of batteries and electric vehicles will decline. In addition to potential economic benefits, recovery can also reduce the number of materials entering the landfill.

Sun Zhi, pollution control expert, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that cobalt, nickel, manganese and other metals found in the battery can easily leak from the outer casing buried in the battery, pollute the soil and groundwater, threaten ecosystems and human health. The same is true for fluorinated salts (common in LiPF6) in the organic solvent used in battery electrolytes. Battery will not only have a negative impact on service life, but also may have a negative impact on the environment before manufacturing the battery.

As the Gaines of Argonne, more recycling uses less raw material mining and fewer related environmental hazards. For example, mining requires metal to treat metal sulfide ore for some batteries, which is energy-intensive and emission SOX, which can cause acid rain. Reduce dependence on battery materials can also slow down the consumption of these raw materials.

Gaines and Argonne's colleagues use the calculation method to study this problem, and how to simulate how the growing battery production affects the geological reserves of many metals in 2050. Researchers recognize these predictions "complex and uncertain", researchers have found the world reserves of lithium and nickel to maintain the rapid growth of battery production. But battery manufacturing may reduce global cobalt reserves more than 10%.

Recycling lithium-ion batteries may also help solve political costs and drawbacks. According to a report of CSIRO, 50% of world cobalt production comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and related to armed conflict, illegal mining, human rights and harmful environmental practices. The cathode for recycling the battery and forms a cobalt concentration can help reduce the dependence of foreign resources for such problems and increase the security of the supply chain.

The challenge of recovering lithium-ion batteries is just like economic factors, and they also oppose this reason. For example, the large fluctuation of raw material batteries has brought uncertainty to recycling economics. In particular, the sharp decline in cobalt prices has triggered people's doubts, compared to the manufacture of new batteries, it is a good business choice.

Basically, if the price of cobalt declines, the regenerated cobalt will be difficult to compete in price and mining, the manufacturer will choose the material of the mining rather than regeneration, thus forcing the recovery to stop business. For companies that consider battery recovery, another long-term financial issue is to use other types of batteries, such as LIAIR or other vehicle propulsion systems, such as hydrogen fuel cells, will occupy main foothold in the electric car market in the next few years. Thereby reducing the demand for recovered lithium ion batteries.

Battery chemistry also makes recovery complex. Since Sony in the 1990s, the researchers have repeatedly adjusted the ingredients of the cathode to reduce costs and increase charging capacity, life, charging time and other performance parameters. Some lithium ion batteries use a cathode made of lithium cobaltate (LCO).

Other lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides (NMC), lithium nickel-cobalt aluminum oxide, lithium iron phosphate or other materials. Moreover, between the manufacturer, the ingredient ratio in a type of cathode (e.g.

, NMC) may vary widely. As a result, the lithium-ion battery contains "a wide variety of continuous development materials, which makes recovery", "said Liang An, a battery recycling expert of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Reploys may need to classify and separate according to constituents to meet the requirements of purchasing recycled materials, making the process more complex and increased costs.

Battery structure further complicates recovery work. Lithium ion batteries are compact, complex equipment, have various sizes and shapes, and cannot be disassembled. Each battery includes a cathode, anode, diaphragm, and electrolyte.

The cathode is typically formed from an electrochemically active powder (LCO, NMC, etc.) and carbon black, and is bonded to the aluminum foil concentration with a polymer compound (such as polyvinylidene fluoride) (PVDF). Anode usually contains graphite, PVDF and copper foil.

The separator for insulating the electrode to prevent short-circuiting is a porous plastic film, usually polyethylene or polypropylene. The electrolyte is usually LiPF6 solution dissolved in a mixture of ethylene carbonate and dimethyl carbonate. The components are closely wound or stacked and securely packaged in plastic or aluminum housings.

Large battery packs that provide power for electric vehicles may contain thousands of batteries that press module packets. These packaging also include sensors, security devices, and circuitry to control batteries, all of which have added another layer of complexity and increased disassembly and recovery costs. All of these battery components and materials need to be treated by recyculations to obtain valuable metals and other materials.

It is clear that the lead-acid car battery is easy to disassemble, and lead (about 60% of the weight of the battery) can be quickly separated from other components. As a result, nearly 100% lead in these batteries is recovered in the United States, far exceeding the recovery rate of glass, paper and other materials. Improve the recovery method at this stage, several large fire smelters are recovering lithium-ion batteries.

These devices are typically operated at temperatures of 1,500 ¡ã C, which can be recovered from burning cobalt, nickel and copper, but cannot recover lithium, aluminum or any organic compounds. These facilities require a lot of funds, partly because of the need to handle the emissions of toxic fluororesides released during the smelting process. For example, wet metallurgy or chemical immersion is commercially available in China, which provides an alternative to energy-intensive alternatives and reduces investment costs.

These extraction and separation of cathode metals are typically operated below 100 ¡ã C, except for other transition metals, can also recover lithium and copper. One of the disadvantages of conventional leaching methods is to require corrosive reagents such as hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide. Researchers who conduct a benchmark scale study have identified potential improvements in these recovery methods, but only a few companies have been recovered in the method of mid-test scale.

In Vancouver, British Columbia, a US manganese plant converts 1kg / h cathode waste into a precursor, manufacturer can use them to synthesize fresh cathode materials. Waste refers to the unqualified cathode powder, decoration and other waste collected during the battery manufacturing process. The company's Chief Technology Officer Zarkomenseldzija describes the waste as "low drapery", which is a material that is convenient to use, can be used in experiments to expand the operating scale and turn to the actual waste battery.

He explained that the company's process leaks the cathode metal with sulfur dioxide, and has hydrochloric acid or hydrogen peroxide. The company's CEO Eric Glaz (Ericgh, said that battery resource companies in Woodsti City, Massachusetts are running a commissioned factory, and the plant has a speed of approximately 0.5 metric tons per day, and is actively Work hard to increase capacity 10 times.

Many of the recycling methods will produce a variety of monometallic compounds that must be combined to make new cathode materials. BatteryResourcer process will precipitate mixtures of nickel, manganese and cobalt hydroxide. This hybrid metal cathode precursor simplifies the preparation of the battery and reduces manufacturing costs.

At the same time, the DOE's Recell team is pursuing a so-called direct recycling method to recover and reuse battery materials without expensive processing. One method requires removing electrolytes with supercritical carbon dioxide, then crushed the battery and physically separating components, for example, based on density. In principle, after this simple process, almost all components can be reused.

In particular, since this method does not use acid or other irritating reagents, the morphology and crystal structure of the cathode material remain intact, and the material retains its valuable electrochemical properties. Gaines said that to implement this cost-saving method, you need more work. In Birmingham University, Relib team members Alirezarastegarpanah developed robotic methods for safe, automatedly handled lithium-ion batteries.

In the Relib project of Birmingham University, Chief Researcher Paul Anderson said that the research team found an obvious opportunity to improve the economic efficiency of battery recovery through automation. To this end, the team is developing robot procedures to sort, disassemble and recover valuable materials from lithium ion batteries. Birmingham's researcher Allaun Walton added that the use of robot equipment to remove the battery to eliminate the risk of electricity and chemical injury.

He said that automation can also enhance the separation of battery components and improve their purity and value. Although most of these strategies are still in the early stages of development, their demand is growing. Currently, the number of scrapped electric car batteries is small, but it is about to increase.

The Hong Kong Institute of Technology has said that many obstacles have hindered large-scale recycling, but "opportunities are always related to challenges". It's time to scream, take the recycled lithium-ion battery seriousl.