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On January 29, 2021, Volkswagen Group Components (part of the Volkswagen Group) officially launched battery recycling at its factory in Salzgitter, Germany.
The project, announced in 2019, is currently in a pilot phase with a daily capacity of 5 battery systems per team. The annual capacity is 3,600 per year, which equates to approximately 1,500 tonnes at 400 kg per battery.
“Larger volumes of battery returns are not expected until the end of the 2020s at the earliest. Therefore, the plant was designed to initially recycle up to 3,600 battery systems per year during the pilot phase, equivalent to approximately 1,500 tonnes. In the future, the system can be scaled to handle larger quantities as the process is constantly being optimized. “
The first step is an analysis of the battery modules to determine if the battery is still powerful enough to have a second life in other applications, such as energy storage or low speed electric vehicles / robots.
Only batteries that can no longer be used for other purposes will be recycled.
The initial recovery rate is more than 70% battery weight, while the long-term goal is more than 90%.
The main purpose of battery recycling is to recover raw materials (such as lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt, aluminum, copper and plastics) and use them in a closed loop, producing new battery cells.
The batteries will come from fully electric cars based on the MEB and PPE platforms as well as from rechargeable hybrids. Usually these are test vehicle batteries, as new cars from customers only enter the market in volume.
“Until now, used batteries have mostly been recycled in a pyrometallurgical process. In simpler terms, they just end up in the blast furnace. Volkswagen Group Components uses a mechanical process first.”
“Once the battery enters the recycling process, it is first emptied and dismantled. The initial raw materials such as its aluminum casing, copper cable and plastic are already collected here and returned to the production cycle. . “
“Then the battery modules are strongly crushed under a protective atmosphere and the escaping liquid electrolyte transforms them into a wet mass, the granule.”
“This is dried, passed through various sieves and a magnetic tape, and thus becomes finer and finer. Eventually, a so-called ‘black powder’ is produced, which contains, among other things, valuable graphite as well as lithium, manganese, cobalt and nickel. “
“A partner company in the chemical industry then separates it into its individual components using a hydrometallurgical process, ie using water and solvents. These can be used as a secondary raw material for the construction of new battery cathodes – without any loss of quality compared to new primary material. “
In a few years, when the electric vehicle market matures and recycling technology advances, most of the raw materials from old batteries will be recovered and reused to produce new batteries. The mining and overall impact on the environment can thus be kept to a minimum.
If at some point in the future we will be able to mainly use solar electricity and use the same raw materials in new products, closed loop the world should be a much better place.
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