Lithium-Ion Batteries
Sustainable recycling of lithium-ion batteries
Lithium-ion batteries supply smartphones, propel electric cars and bicycles and give your handheld power drill its power. And as mobile communication, electric vehicles and DIY are growing markets, the quantity of lithium-ion batteries will rise accordingly. At the same time, the number of lithium-ion battery cells produced will also increase significantly.
Sustainable utilisation from cell production to end of life will therefore become more and more important – but not a problem. For we offer a complete service including the recycling of all battery production waste (e.g. cathode material) and all types of lithium-ion batteries. Our state-of-the-art technology enables us to achieve high recycling rates.
Battery recycling generally involves four stages.
Discharging
In the first stage, the battery systems are identified, assessed and discharged. The energy obtained is fed back into Redux’s own grid. We are involved with a range of projects relating to second life e-car batteries.
Disassembly
The energy storage systems are then dismantled. Given the wide variation in sizes and types, this is the best way to achieve the highest output of secondary raw materials. Depending on the type of battery, this process takes between twenty and more than sixty minutes This process yields plastics, cables, aluminium or electronic components.
Thermal pre-treatment
After that, the cells of the batteries are deactivated using a special thermal treatment process, after which the coating of the electrode conductor foils and the separator and electrolyte are removed. Contrary to conventional methods, we are able to even extract aluminium conductor foil thanks to special process control.
Mechanical processing
In the course of the final step, a maximum amount of material is extracted from the thermally deactivated batteries by means of mechanical processing. The composite material is firstly released and the active materials are then isolated directly in a process step. This is followed by sieving and magnetic separation to yield a ferromagnetic fraction, an aluminium fraction and an aluminium-copper fraction.
