After years of rapid development of the global new energy industry, the first batch of power batteries and energy storage batteries put into operation in 2018-2020 have entered the centralized retirement period in 2026. Industry statistics show that the global annual retired battery scale has exceeded 1.2 million tons, among which waste graphite anode materials account for more than 35% of the total battery waste. A large number of waste graphite materials are directly landfilled or incinerated, which not only causes serious waste of high-quality carbon resources, but also brings environmental pollution risks such as heavy metal leakage and organic waste residue accumulation.
Graphite, as a non-renewable strategic mineral resource, has limited global high-quality reserves. With the continuous expansion of downstream market demand, the shortage of high-purity graphite raw materials has become increasingly prominent. The recycling and reuse of waste battery graphite anode materials can effectively supplement the supply of global graphite resources, reduce the exploitation of natural graphite ores, and realize the green and circular development of the industry. Therefore, the recycling of waste battery graphite materials has been listed as a key green industrial project by major global economies, and has received policy support and industrial capital favor.
However, the large-scale industrialization of waste graphite battery recycling has long been restricted by technical bottlenecks. Waste graphite anode materials contain a large number of impurities such as lithium salt electrolyte, metal foil residue, organic binder and positive electrode powder. The traditional single physical screening or chemical leaching process has low impurity removal efficiency, and the recycled graphite materials have low purity, poor performance stability and cannot be reused in high-end battery production. In addition, the traditional recycling process has high energy consumption, large waste liquid and waste gas discharge, and high comprehensive cost, resulting in low economic benefits of the recycling industry and difficulty in large-scale promotion.
In 2026, with the continuous maturity of global carbon material recycling technology, innovative integrated recycling processes have broken through the industry's technical pain points. The new generation of "physical sorting + low-temperature pyrolysis + deep chemical purification" composite process can efficiently remove complex impurities from waste graphite materials, and realize the regeneration and upgrading of waste graphite. The recycled graphite materials after technical treatment have purity, particle size and electrochemical performance close to virgin graphite materials, which can be reused in battery anode production, realizing resource closed-loop recycling. At present, European, American and Asian leading new energy enterprises have successively laid out graphite battery recycling projects, and the industry's circular economy model has gradually taken shape.
As a benchmark enterprise for green circular development in the global graphite industry, Jincheng Graphite has taken the lead in layout the waste battery graphite recycling track and independently developed a set of efficient, low-carbon and low-cost graphite regeneration and recycling integrated technology. The enterprise abandons the traditional high-energy-consumption and high-pollution single purification process, and adopts segmented low-temperature pyrolysis technology to decompose organic binders and electrolyte impurities in waste graphite materials at low energy consumption, avoiding structural damage to graphite materials caused by high-temperature treatment.
In terms of deep impurity removal, Jincheng Graphite's innovative graded purification process can accurately remove trace metal impurities and residual positive electrode powder in waste graphite. The recycled graphite materials produced by the process have a purity of more than 99.2%, stable particle size distribution and excellent electrochemical cycle performance, fully meeting the production requirements of power battery and energy storage battery anode materials. Compared with the traditional recycling process, this technology reduces recycling energy consumption by 22% and comprehensive production cost by 18%, with significant economic and environmental benefits.
At present, Jincheng Graphite has built a large-scale intelligent graphite battery recycling production base, realizing centralized recycling, intelligent sorting, efficient purification and regenerated material production of global waste battery graphite materials. The enterprise has established long-term recycling cooperation with global battery recycling enterprises and new energy vehicle manufacturers, forming a complete industrial closed loop of "waste material recycling - regeneration purification - high-end material production - market supply". The regenerated graphite products have been exported to Europe, Southeast Asia and other regions, successfully applied in new energy battery production.
Industry analysts said that the graphite circular economy industry will usher in explosive growth in the next three years. With the continuous increase of retired battery scale and the further maturity of recycling technology, the proportion of recycled graphite in the global graphite market supply will continue to rise. Jincheng Graphite, with its leading recycling technology and perfect circular industrial layout, will continue to lead the green and sustainable development of the global graphite industry, provide stable recycled high-quality graphite materials for the global new energy industry, and contribute to the global dual-carbon cause.
