The prospect of power battery recycling is promising

The market price of nickel, cobalt and rare earth, which are the main valuable metals of power batteries, is rising, which will seriously affect the manufacturing cost of power batteries. Taking ni-mh power batteries as an example, the nickel content, cobalt content and rare earth content in the waste ni-mh power batteries are 30%~50%, 2%~5% and 5%, respectively. The models and specifications of power battery products are uniform, the component content is stable, and the application market is easy to manage, which provide very convenient conditions for its recycling.

It can be predicted that in the future, the recycling and recycling of power batteries will become an emerging industry. The recycling and recycling of failed power batteries will not only bring huge environmental benefits, but also considerable economic and social benefits. This can not only effectively control the cost of batteries, but also have a positive effect on the popularization of hybrid electric vehicles.

The rare earth resources used in ni-mh power batteries are mainly mixed rare earth metals such as lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium and neodymium, which exist in the form of hydrogen storage alloy cathode active materials by melting with nickel, cobalt, manganese and other metals. As can be seen from this, the chemical composition of nimh batteries is very complex. Compared with other batteries, such as nickel-cadmium batteries, it is much more difficult to recover and separate them.

Honda and Japan heavy chemical industry co., ltd. have jointly developed a nickel metal hydride battery recycling mass production process, which extracts mixed rare earth oxides from the failed products and further electrolyzes them into mixed rare earth metals that can be directly used to prepare nickel metal hydride battery cathode materials. This approach has cost and composition advantages over rare earths mined from mines. In addition, the mixed rare earth obtained by molten salt electrolysis is applied directly, which avoids the complex separation and purification of rare earth and shortens the traditional recycling process. This recycling mode will become the main recycling mode in the future.

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