Abstract:
With the rapid growth of global electric vehicle ownership, the processing and recycling of retired power batteries has become a core issue facing the industrial ecology. A team of scientists recently successfully developed a new direct repair technology that can restore the electrical performance of aging batteries to more than 95% of their original capacity without completely crushing and dismantling them into their original elements.
This achievement is not only expected to significantly reduce the recycling cost and energy consumption of retired batteries, but also opens up a more efficient and environmentally friendly technical path for the recycling of electric vehicle power batteries.
After thousands of charge and discharge cycles of traditional lithium-ion batteries, the battery capacity will irreversibly decay due to the structural damage of the positive and negative electrode materials and the continuous consumption of active lithium ions. The current mainstream recycling methods in the industry mainly rely on hydrometallurgy or pyrometallurgy technology, that is, through rigorous processes such as high-temperature smelting or strong acid leaching, used batteries are completely decomposed and key metals such as lithium, nickel, and cobalt are extracted. This traditional crushing, dismantling and recycling model not only consumes extremely high energy and produces large carbon emissions, but also has complex chemical treatment processes and high overall costs.
To address this pain point, researchers have turned their research focus to the field of "direct regeneration" technology. Through in-depth analysis of the microphysical and chemical mechanisms of battery degradation, the research team developed a sophisticated direct repair process. This method does not require deep chemical damage to the battery, but directly targets retired or severely attenuated battery pole materials. By directionally replenishing the lost active lithium ions, and using specific heat treatment and surface structure repair, the damaged electrode crystal structure can be reconstructed in situ, thereby allowing the aging battery material to regain new charge and discharge activity.
Experimental data shows that the electrochemical performance of the battery pole pieces treated by this direct repair process has been significantly improved, the battery capacity has been successfully restored to about 95% of its original state, and the overall cycle stability and safety performance have basically reached the standards of new factory batteries. By eliminating the tedious steps of completely reducing materials to elemental metals, this technology significantly reduces the recycling process, greatly reduces the usage of chemical reagents and energy consumption, and significantly reduces the overall recycling cycle and economic costs.
Industry experts pointed out that although this technology still faces engineering challenges such as consistency screening of used batteries and automated disassembly and assembly support from the laboratory to large-scale industrial application, the significant benefits it has demonstrated have broad development prospects. As more retired batteries using direct repair technology return to the supply chain in the future, this will not only effectively alleviate the supply pressure of core mineral resources such as lithium, but also significantly reduce the carbon footprint of the entire life cycle of electric vehicles, injecting strong momentum into the construction of a green and sustainable recycling system for the global new energy vehicle industry.
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