Farewell to the era of inefficient integration! Hengli Equipment's "highly collaborative native integration" directly addresses the pain points of lithium battery recycling

To provide insights into the current lithium battery recycling market, the certainty of demand explosion coupled with the structural shortage on the supply side undoubtedly paints the most accurate picture.

1. "Illusion of production capacity" in the "hundred billion blue ocean"

On the one hand, the demand side has secured a certain growth: with China's new energy vehicle sales surpassing 16 million units in 2025, the amount of retired power batteries will exceed 1495GWh. Based on the 5-8 year retirement lag effect of power batteries, the exponential growth of raw material recycling in the next decade is no longer a prediction, but a certainty. The formation of a multi-billion-yuan urban mine is accelerating, and the market dividend is clearly visible.

On the other hand, the supply side is deeply plagued by a structural shortage of effective production capacity. Although the current market appears to have excess capacity, over 90% of the existing production capacity consists of "small workshops" with outdated technology and substandard environmental protection. This part of the nominal production capacity, which is severely inflated, creates the illusion of market saturation. Under the dual pressures of the normalization of national environmental protection inspections and the high-voltage line of safe production, a large number of non-compliant production capacities are facing mandatory clearance.

Currently, there are nearly 200,000 existing enterprises related to power battery recycling in China, yet only 156 of them have been included in the "white list" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. This means that the effective production capacity capable of ensuring long-term compliant operations accounts for less than one-thousandth of the total, which is extremely scarce.

II. "Triple Failure" Constraining the High-quality Development of the Industry

Beneath the appearance of nominal overcapacity lies the collective failure of traditional technological routes in the three dimensions of safety, economy, and environmental protection:

Safety failure: Traditional processes commonly involve directly feeding materials, which have only undergone coarse crushing and still contain a large amount of flammable and explosive electrolyte, into high-temperature pyrolysis furnaces. This leads to the accumulation of highly volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in a sealed space. If there is even a minor leak that allows oxygen to enter, it can trigger a violent flash explosion, placing the production line in an uncontrollable and high-risk state for an extended period.

Economic Inefficiency: The pyrolysis furnace should be the profit center of the recycling production line, but under the traditional model, it has become a cost black hole that eats into profits due to three major technical issues: ① Corrosion and Life Reduction: Residual lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) in the electrolyte decomposes into highly corrosive hydrogen fluoride (HF) under the action of high temperature and trace moisture. This leads to corrosion and perforation of the furnace tubes, significantly reducing equipment life and driving up maintenance and replacement costs. ② Coking and Material Blockage: The binder PVDF softens and becomes sticky at high temperatures, easily causing material agglomeration. Frequent material blockages force the production line to shut down for cleaning, severely restricting continuous operation time and actual processing capacity. ③ Oxidation and Quality Reduction: Due to inadequate sealing technology, it is difficult to maintain a stable oxygen-deprived environment inside the furnace. This leads to oxidation of metals such as cobalt, nickel, and copper, causing the grade of black powder to plummet, significantly increasing acid consumption and impurity removal costs in downstream hydrometallurgy.

Environmental protection failure: The exhaust gas components generated from the pyrolysis of waste batteries are extremely complex, posing dual challenges to traditional end-of-pipe environmental protection treatment: ① Highly toxic substance derivative risk: When the pyrolysis conditions of chlorine-containing PVDF and organic solvents are not precisely controlled (such as temperature window fluctuations), it is extremely easy to induce the synthesis of persistent and highly toxic pollutants such as dioxins, posing irreversible environmental and health hazards. ② Emission compliance risk: The industry generally adopts "low-synergy integration" general-purpose environmental protection equipment, lacking specialized design for lithium battery exhaust gas. This "integrated" production line is difficult to cope with complex working conditions, leading to drastic fluctuations in emission data. In the current era of increasingly stringent environmental protection inspections, enterprises face the threat of production suspension for rectification or even revocation of qualifications.

III. Hefei Hengli establishes "three long-term certainties" in the industry with its experience in high-end equipment manufacturing

Hefei Hengli Equipment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Hengli Equipment") was founded in 1992 and is affiliated with the 43rd Research Institute of China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC). It is a national high-tech enterprise.

Hengli Equipment has been deeply involved in four major equipment fields: electric heating, lithium battery, environmental protection, and resource recycling. With its excellent technical quality and market reputation, it has maintained a leading position in the industry.

Lithium battery recycling is not a simple physical crushing process, but a complex thermochemical reaction.

With over 30 years of experience in high-end thermal engineering and a deep understanding of lithium battery equipment, Hengli Equipment has a profound grasp of the characteristics of the entire lifecycle of lithium batteries. We recognize that in the current era of competition for existing markets, successful lithium battery recycling projects must not only focus on short-term production capacity, but must also deliver the following "three major long-term certainties":

Safety certainty: The entire line solution must possess an inherent safety gene. It cannot rely on backend remedies; instead, it must eliminate the risk of combustion and explosion from the source, ensuring that the enterprise achieves long-term, stable production with zero accidents.

Environmental protection certainty: The environmental protection system should be the bottom line for compliant operations. It is necessary to ensure that under complex working conditions, exhaust emissions can meet standards in a long-term and stable manner, and that enterprises can pass all rigorous environmental approvals and inspections, completely eliminating the risk of shutdown.

Economic certainty: The goal of the entire line plan is to achieve ultimate efficiency, which necessitates excellence in both revenue increase and cost reduction dimensions:

On the revenue-increasing side, we maximize the value of materials to ensure high purity and high recovery rates of products such as black powder, copper, and aluminum. On the cost-reducing side, we utilize technological means to extend the lifespan of core equipment, reduce overall energy consumption, and minimize maintenance costs.

IV. Hengli's solution: Solving industry challenges through "highly collaborative and native integration"

Hengli Equipment has abandoned the traditional industry mindset of integrating standalone machines into a complete production line, and innovatively introduced a "highly collaborative and native integrated" complete production line solution. Through system-level top-level design, it achieves a triple breakthrough: "intrinsic safety, high value return, and long-term asset efficiency".

Electrified negative pressure crushing and drying system: After undergoing atmosphere replacement and pressure balancing, the electrified battery is stepwise transported through various functional chambers, where safe crushing and electrolyte collection are completed in a fully controlled low-temperature negative pressure environment. Its core value lies in: ① Locking in high-value returns: Utilizing the low-temperature negative pressure environment, the electrolyte (LiPF₆) is directionally decomposed into solid lithium fluoride (LiF) and stably locked in the black powder. This prevents lithium loss in gaseous form, enhances lithium recovery rates, and increases economic benefits. ② Doubling asset lifespan: By collecting the vast majority of electrolyte at the front end, fluorine reduction at the source is achieved, reducing corrosion sources at the back end, extending the service life of pyrolysis equipment, lowering life cycle operation and maintenance costs, and ensuring long-term asset value. ③ Environmental protection and cost reduction closed loop: By retaining fluorine in solid form, the complexity and equipment investment required for end-of-pipe environmental treatment are significantly simplified. At the same time, the collected electrolyte is used as a high-calorific value fuel, realizing the resource recovery of hazardous waste, and reducing the energy consumption of the entire line operation.

Low-to-medium energy consumption and precise control high-temperature pyrolysis system: In response to the characteristics of lithium battery scrap materials, such as easy arching and strong corrosion, systematic reconstruction has been carried out in terms of conveying, sealing, equipment materials, and processes, achieving high-value material recovery and long-term stable operation of the equipment. Its core value lies in: ① Stable and efficient conveying: In response to the high-temperature and easy-to-arch characteristics, an anti-arching and anti-blocking design and EDEM simulation optimization of the material guiding structure are adopted. Combined with precise timing control of the furnace tube speed, it ensures that the pyrolysis residence time of all materials is highly consistent, effectively solving the problem of material blockage and ensuring consistent output. ② Multiple ultimate sealing: An original multi-level combined sealing technology is used to achieve ppm-level control of oxygen content inside the furnace. This fundamentally prevents copper and aluminum oxidation, ensures recovery quality and recovery rate, eliminates the risk of thermal runaway, and reduces energy consumption.

③ Dual corrosion resistance: By adopting a strategy of source reduction and material upgrading, the furnace tubes are made of special corrosion-resistant alloys and manufactured through explosive cladding technology. While ensuring strong corrosion resistance, the approach also considers economic efficiency, reducing operation and maintenance costs.

Ultra-clean circulation system: Unlike traditional end-of-pipe environmental protection treatment equipment, it serves as a key hub in achieving a closed loop for material and energy flow within the concept of "highly collaborative and native integration". Hengli Equipment, leveraging its lithium battery expertise, deeply integrates environmental protection treatment into process design, realizing the dual value of ultra-clean emissions and energy self-circulation. Its core values lie in: ① Deep purification and low emissions: For fluorinated organic waste gases, a combined process of incineration, quenching, and multi-stage purification is adopted. This ensures that all indicators meet European and American standards, providing long-term and certain environmental compliance guarantees for project operations. ② Resource utilization of hazardous waste: Utilizing a native closed-loop design, high-calorific value waste gases from the early and middle stages are sent to incinerators for waste heat recovery. This not only solves the problem of hazardous waste treatment but also significantly reduces the consumption of outsourced energy such as natural gas for the entire line, transforming treatment costs into energy benefits. The incinerator chamber is constructed using special chrome-corundum materials, which can effectively resist the strong corrosion of high-temperature fluorinated flue gas. At the same time, it ensures that the waste gas stays fully in the high-temperature zone of the furnace, ensuring thorough decomposition of organic pollutants and ensuring long-term, trouble-free and stable operation of the system.

V. Conclusion

As the lithium battery recycling industry enters the final stage, simply accumulating production capacity is a thing of the past. The core competitiveness of enterprises will return to the origin of technology. In future market competition, Hengli Equipment is willing to use its leading technical capabilities and comprehensive service system to help customers build core barriers, calmly face challenges, and achieve win-win value!