Potential for recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries in China

ABSTRACT

The continual increase in new energy vehicles (NEVs) has created the urgent need to recycle lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to the power battery installed in them. To solve the waste problem spent LIBs has created, identifying their number and utilizing them remain crucial, both as a result of economic and environmental concerns. In the current study, the logistic growth curve was adopted to predict NEV sales beginning 2013 through to 2030 in China. It is predicted NEV sales will reach 1.56 billion by 2030. Based on these figures, spent LIBs and the proportion of valuable metals they encase were estimated using the methods-of-material-flow analysis, the Weibull distribution model, and a sampling investigation. The economic potential for recycling spent LIBs from the extraction of valuable metals was therefore estimated. Results showed that based on the continual increase in NEV sales, 5.56 billion US dollars can be generated from extracting valuable metals from spent LIBs and LIBs2U.The economic potential from the recycling of spent LIBs could significantly fast-track the development of the spent LIB recycling industry in China. This could also alleviate the issue of the environmental degradation that occurs as a result of improper spent LIBs disposal.

KEYWORDS:

• Spent lithium-ion batteries
• recycling
• metals extraction
• economic potential
• environmental concern
• China

Acknowledgement

The authors greatly appreciate the enormous support by Prof. John Mathew and Dr. Candy Lu from the Business and Economics School of Macquarie University in Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. https://app.mps.gov.cn/gdnps/pc/content.jsp?id=8322369.

2. EVvolumes.com.

3. https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-620-billion-investment-opportunity-2040/.

4. https://www.miit.gov.cn/zwgk/wjgs/art/2020/art_9efc552cb05a4296ad8901df223da174.html.

5. https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2019-08-19/doc-ihytcern1985141.shtml.

6. 4R Energy and Electrify collaborate in second-life battery storage products. https://www.cefc.com.au/media/files/4r-energy-and-relectrify-collaborate-in-second-life-battery-storage-products/.

7. The recycling capacity of GEM. http://en.gem.com.cn/.

Additional information

Funding

Authors would like to acknowledge the support from Anhui Provincial Department of Education China under Grant No. gxyqZD2021036 and the funding from Tongling University under the Grant No. 2020tlxyxs24.