How can we scientifically recycle the power batteries of new energy vehicles that are created for environmental protection?

In recent years, with the global energy crisis and environmental deterioration, people's environmental awareness has gradually increased. The new energy vehicle industry has emerged and is developing at a rapid momentum.

At present, my country's new energy vehicle production and sales have firmly ranked first in the world. According to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, from January to August 2019, my country's new energy vehicle sales were 793,000, maintaining a year-on-year growth rate of 32%. According to the national "13th Five-Year Plan" new energy vehicle plan, by 2020, my country's annual production and sales of new energy vehicles will reach 5 million. With the large-scale promotion and application of new energy vehicles, the comprehensive utilization of waste power batteries is particularly urgent.

Generally speaking, the warranty period of new energy vehicle power batteries is 5-8 years, which means that from 2009 to the present, the first batch of new energy vehicle power batteries that entered the market in my country have reached the recycling and retirement stage.

According to the calculation of China Automotive Technology Research Center, taking into account factors such as the age of automobile scrapping and battery life, the cumulative scrapped power batteries in my country will reach 120,000-200,000 tons from 2018 to 2020, and will reach 350,000 tons in 2025. At present, my country's treatment methods for new energy vehicle power batteries are mainly cascade utilization and disassembly and recycling.

"Dismantling and recycling" means, as the name suggests, dismantling, separating, purifying, and smelting scrapped batteries through chemical methods, and recycling and reusing metal elements such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese in the battery cells as raw materials.

The "retirement wave" of new energy vehicle power batteries will become a difficult problem for urban governance. As the country gradually and strictly promotes garbage collection and classification, scrapped batteries will also become a considerable amount of solid waste "garbage".

It is understood that in the recycling and utilization of waste batteries, traceability is considered a key link. The "Interim Provisions on Traceability Management of Recycling and Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles" proposes to establish a comprehensive traceability management platform to collect information on the entire process of production, sales, use, scrapping, recycling and utilization of new energy power lithium batteries, and to conduct inspections on the performance of recycling responsibilities by the entities in each link.

Not only that, in fact, waste power batteries are also valuable "urban mines". It is understood that my country needs to import a large amount of lithium ore every year, with an external dependence rate of more than 85%. It is precisely because of China's demand that the price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has skyrocketed.