In recent years, with the rapid and rapid development of China's new energy enterprise automobile service industry, as a kind of power system battery lithium battery production also presents a blowout growth. Lithium battery life of about 5 years to 7 years, which also breeds a huge lithium battery recycling market. According to the China Business Industrial Technology Research Institute research report data show that China's used lithium batteries from the recovery of cobalt, nickel, manganese, lithium, iron and aluminum and other metals created by the economic scale of the market is expected to reach in 2020 will be more than 10 billion yuan, in 2023 up to 25 billion yuan.

Currently widely used in the market of lithium-ion batteries are mainly lithium-ion batteries,Lithium battery recycling according to different cathode materials can be divided into lithium manganese batteries, lithium cobalt batteries, lithium iron phosphate batteries and lithium ternary batteries. For different types of lithium batteries, the recycling methods are different. For example, lithium iron phosphate batteries contain only lithium metal, although the value of direct recovery of lithium is not high, but its cycling performance and stability is better, but lithium ternary batteries contain nickel, cobalt and manganese and other high-value metals, due to its poor recycling rate and safety, it is not suitable for the gradient utilization, and it can be directly processed as waste material for resource conversion.

After 2009, with the widespread use of electric vehicles and electronic products, the use of lithium batteries has increased dramatically, and patent applications related to lithium battery recycling have increased to nearly one hundred. Sumitomo Metals Japan, Japan Mining Metals, Toyota, Komei Belgium, Merck Germany, Korea Geological Resources Institute and many companies in the world's major lithium battery markets, including China, are committed to the research of lithium battery recycling. Relevant patent applications cover various aspects of lithium battery recycling, such as pre-treatment of used lithium batteries, separation of cathode materials, extraction of valuable metals and electrolyte treatment. The battery recycling technology varies from company to company.

After 2013, companies' research is more inclined to improve environmental protection and economy in the battery recycling process, simplify the recycling process and the treatment of fluorine-containing electrolytes, and there is no major breakthrough in recycling technology. Within the industry, battery recycling cooperation between battery recycling companies and downstream battery application companies has been strengthened in terms of battery recycling, such as Sumitomo Metals and Toyota, which has been working with BMW, Audi and other international automotive companies to develop battery recycling strategies to facilitate closed-loop operations for battery material recycling.

There are various ways to recycle used lithium batteries, and physical recycling is a common way to recycle used lithium batteries. It includes dismantling, decomposing and categorizing used lithium batteries, and classifying and recycling different components and materials. For example, through mechanical crushing, magnetic separation, gravity separation and other methods,battery production line metals, plastics and other useful substances in used lithium batteries are separated to realize resource recycling and reuse.

Unlike the development of foreign enterprises, China's small and medium-sized enterprises in the new energy vehicle power battery management, the early stage is mainly lithium iron phosphate, related technology patents layout design mainly research focused on wet metallurgy on waste lithium batteries to classify and recycle the effective use of these aspects, and for the dry metallurgy, the battery's discharge and disassembly of the battery and other pre-treatment methods such as process analysis as well as the recycling of the electrolyte.

In the face of increasingly fierce market competition, in terms of technology, to improve the ability to directly recycle waste lithium batteries, simplify the recycling process, reduce the cost of waste lithium batteries; to improve the recovery rate of valuable metals and the performance of regenerated products, thereby enhancing the economic benefits of the lithium battery recycling industry; to deepen cooperation with downstream application enterprises.

It is necessary to deepen the cooperation with downstream application enterprises, labeling machine close the distance to the target market of recycled materials, improve the recycling mechanism of waste lithium battery materials, and build a closed-loop industrial chain of lithium-ion batteries from R&D, production, application to recycling. In addition, it is also possible to expand the application fields of battery recycling materials and improve the utilization value of recycled waste batteries.