With the rapid development of power battery technology, the field of battery recycling has also seen new breakthroughs.
According to foreign media reports, South Korean company Young Poong Corp. has developed a technology that can recover metals from discarded electric vehicle batteries. The company claims that its technology achieves the world's highest recycling rate, reaching up to 95%.
Young Poong stated that it recovers 95% of the metals, including nickel, cobalt, and copper, from waste batteries through dry smelting technology (direct smelting); and also recovers more than 90% of the lithium through dust removal equipment.
The company has filed a patent application for its direct smelting technology.
It is understood that the current technology used to recover metals from waste electric vehicle batteries is wet leaching (hydrometallurgy), which breaks down secondary batteries into cells. Young Poong Corp., however, has developed a dry smelting technology that breaks down batteries into modules, which are then placed into a furnace.
Young Poong Corp.'s dry smelting technology is particularly well-suited for recycling batteries from large electric vehicles, such as those weighing 400 kg or more.
Furthermore, dry smelting technology significantly shortens the pretreatment cycle and reduces post-use costs. Wet leaching technology typically takes 10 to 15 days to disassemble batteries into black powder, while dry smelting technology can turn batteries into metal powder in just 2 days.
