【Frontiers in HaiChuan Technology】A team from Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics has proposed a one-step battery recycling process that significantly improves the efficiency of battery recycling

Thread Content

At present, over 90% of China’s nickel and cobalt resources rely on imports, and used lithium batteries contain these expensive metal elements. In 2022, China recycled a total of 300,258 tons of used lithium batteries. Of this, there are 188,692 tons of ternary waste, 94,551 tons of lithium iron phosphate waste, and 17,015 tons of lithium cobalt oxide waste. The high-value-added recycling method proposed by this research team, with the aid of a one-step process, enables the leaching and recovery of precious metal elements from the recycled cathode materials; these elements are then used as raw materials to carry out a coprecipitation process via the one-step method, thereby regenerating brand-new cathode materials. Subsequently, the cathode material can be used in next-generation low-cost, high-safety sodium-ion batteries, enabling the transition to the next generation of energy storage batteries. Today, the price of lithium carbonate has risen to over 450,000 yuan per ton. Under such circumstances, the advantages of sodium-ion batteries become increasingly evident: sodium chloride, which is used as a raw material, costs only a few thousand yuan per ton, and these batteries also offer better safety and performance at low temperatures. In 2023, Chen Zhongwei returned to China full-time to join the Dalian Institute of Physical Chemistry. Not long ago, he and a domestic team developed a one-step battery recycling process. In this study, the team used recycling methods to convert the cathode materials from retired lithium-ion batteries into low-cost cathode materials for sodium-ion batteries, thereby reducing the cost of energy storage batteries and paving the way for the commercialization of low-cost sodium-ion batteries. Recently, a related paper was published in Nature Sustainability (IF 27.6) under the title “Sustainable regeneration of spent cathodes for lithium-ion and post-lithium-ion batteries”. Yang Tingzhou is the first author, while Academician Chen Zhongwei and Researcher Zhang Yongguang from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics serve as co-corresponding authors.