(The following content is based on the live transcript and has not been reviewed by the speaker; it is for reference only.)
Thank you, moderator. Good afternoon, everyone. I am a researcher from the State Key Laboratory of Advanced Processing and Recycling of Nonferrous Metals at Lanzhou University of Technology. I'd like to share our team's research findings on the recycling of power batteries. This technology addresses the stage at which end-of-life batteries can no longer be reused, or at the stage of resource recycling. This technology mainly involves three aspects: incineration, water dissolution, and then manufacturing. I hope to explain the characteristics of this technology through these three aspects. The first aspect, which I will discuss more quickly, is its wide range of applications. In new energy vehicles and energy storage, power batteries are currently a key application area.
Currently, the country attaches great importance to the new energy vehicle industry. Under the guidance of the government, the production and sales of new energy vehicles have increased significantly. With the development of new energy vehicles, the production of power batteries is also increasing year by year. This is an investment project for power batteries found online. It involves investing in the construction of a new energy vehicle base in Chengdu, and Gree Group plans to invest in a new energy base in Lanzhou New Area. As power batteries are used, they will inevitably enter their end-of-life period, resulting in a very large amount of waste. The expected recycling scale in 2026 is also very large. Power batteries, or electric vehicles themselves, are meant to solve energy and environmental pollution problems. However, if batteries are not properly recycled, from the government's perspective, it will affect the construction of a low-carbon society and an economically friendly society. For companies, not recycling power batteries means losing significant business opportunities.
I won't read out the specific data. This is a series of national policies on power battery recycling, from 2012 to 2018. The policies released on February 26th of this year, including the one released on March 3rd, aim to support and cultivate a group of benchmark enterprises. Enterprises have already made significant progress in the cascade utilization and recycling of power batteries, and their processing volume is also very large.
In terms of recycling systems, European, American, and Japanese countries were actually quite advanced in developing recycling networks, establishing their own recycling channels with industry associations and third-party companies.
Our country has done a lot of work in promoting the policy system for the recycling and utilization of end-of-life batteries. For power battery recycling, from the national perspective, and within the industry, we have initially formulated a tiered utilization system, ultimately aiming for resource recovery. Technically, foreign countries mostly use pyrometallurgical methods, while domestically, most use wet methods.
The left side is a typical example of domestic recycling. This technological route has its advantages; it operates very stably and is quite mature. However, considering the recycling cost and added value, we believe there is room for improvement. Currently, the products from dismantling waste lithium batteries, after acid dissolution and elemental separation, are lithium carbonate, sulfate, etc., which are then sent to precursors for high-temperature forging. The right side shows that recycling companies are not currently involved in the process of separating lithium carbonate, lithium carbonate, and sulfate. This is the product of this process. The reason why the elemental separation process in this process is quite complex is that the more complex the process, the higher the recycling cost. To improve this, domestic universities, research institutes, and enterprises have done a lot of work, such as replacing inorganic acids with other elements, and physical remediation as mentioned by Mr. Zhao. I think these are very good technologies for remediation and improvement of current technologies. Our laboratory has made improvements based on this. The difference between this improvement and the technologies mentioned earlier lies in the technical principles. My technology differs from other technologies, or rather, it has its advantages. The technical principles are different. In the acid dissolution stage, we don't perform acid melting. Instead, we dissolve the raw materials to obtain sulfates. We separate some of these raw materials before manufacturing, so the product is no longer primarily sulfate-based. This roadmap means that waste lithium batteries are dismantled, and after dismantling, elemental separation is performed. Although both involve elemental separation, the implementation is different. We only need to separate the lithium, while the others are processed through remanufacturing to obtain positive electrode materials that meet battery requirements. This method is essentially a type of pyrometallurgy. However, pyrometallurgy is a broad category. While our method also falls under the category of pyrometallurgy, the recycling technologies mentioned by other companies differ from the technical principles of pyrometallurgy. This is a new pyrometallurgical method. These are some experimental phenomena we observed during the process. We collected waste battery dismantling data, separated the positive and negative electrode materials, and burned them. After burning, we found that the colors changed, indicating that corresponding changes had occurred, and we further obtained the product. Of course, this research involves more than just technical work. We conducted extensive theoretical research during the application process for national projects such as the 973 Program and the National Natural Science Foundation of China. We explored how this process is caused and what needs to be controlled. From a theoretical perspective, we did a considerable amount of work before finally developing the process technology. The flowchart we proposed is as follows: First, the material is disassembled. After disassembly, surface impurities are removed, yielding the cathode material we need to process, mainly ternary materials such as lithium manganese oxide. Then, it undergoes low-temperature calcination using a firing method, followed by water dissolution and filtration. This filtration yields two products: a filter bed and a filter residue. The filtrate is then processed through a recovery unit, and the filter residue is adjusted. The filtrate yields a lithium carbonate solution, which is then processed and used as raw material for the calcination process. The diagram on the right shows the connection of the equipment. This technology has actually taken us a long time to develop, from 2008 to 2015 when it was fully formed. The patents we filed, closely related to this technology, were granted in 2016, and to date, we have 13 patents granted. In the combustion process, the temperature is below 600 degrees Celsius, meaning the maximum temperature reached is 600 degrees Celsius. The combustion time is actually very fast, much less than an hour. After combustion, the water is mainly sent to the water, which is of relatively high purity and dissolved at room temperature. Further engineering work is needed to refine the technology, mainly including process calculations, calculations of valuable components, material balance calculations, energy balance calculations, and the design of the main equipment dimensions and selection of auxiliary equipment corresponding to the processing scale. This includes the configuration of the workshop corresponding to our processing scale. We are currently working on this, along with a complete and detailed economic and technical analysis. All of this work is ongoing, and we hope to have the opportunity to report to you, our superiors, in the future. This is the work we are currently undertaking.
Now, we are using this technology, for which our school owns the ownership, as a foundation to exchange ideas with domestic industrial parks and enterprises, hoping to achieve cooperation and promote development. Thank you again to the moderator and the conference organizers for providing this platform for exchange. Thank you everyone.
