Can Ningde Times withstand the retirement trend of power batteries? How to replace with new materials

Article: Tan Qing talks about AI Author: Zheng drove a car

Regarding batteries, many people still vividly remember a sentence from a long time ago:

A single No.1 battery that rots in the ground can permanently render 1 square meter of soil useless; a single button battery can contaminate 600 tons of water, equivalent to a person's lifetime of drinking water

Have you ever considered the environmental issue that has shocked us since childhood when we are all talking about 'once we drive an electric car, we can never go back to a gasoline car'?

The effective lifespan of batteries in current new energy vehicles is generally 4-6 years, and the service life is usually 5-8 years. However, this does not mean that their value will be completely depleted in these few years, "an industry insider told us." After the battery is retired, there is usually still 70% -80% of its capacity, and the metal elements such as lithium and cobalt in the battery have significant value

It is not difficult to see that electric vehicles produced around 2015 are now experiencing a wave of retirement for the power batteries they are equipped with. At the same time, with the explosive growth of electric vehicles in recent years, the number of retired power batteries in the coming years will also show a clear positive correlation with this figure.

Will the battery recycling industry, which has significant environmental significance on one hand and a growing market size, become another golden track under the wave of electrification?

The Past and Present of Battery Recycling

The statement that one battery pollutes 600 tons of water is already a tear of the times, "said Liang Zhesheng (pseudonym), a power battery industry insider, to us.

In the 1990s, the country issued relevant regulations to limit the mercury content of battery products. It has been 20 years now, and most batteries on the market have basically achieved mercury free, especially disposable dry batteries. In terms of environmental protection and economy, there is not much recycling value now. The real acceleration of the development of the battery recycling industry is actually the lithium battery that emerged with the popularization of electronic products and two wheeled electric vehicles

As stated, the considerable market size and relatively expensive metals bring scale benefits and economic value to battery recycling, which are two fundamental elements that the battery recycling industry cannot avoid. Tan Qing said that AI believes that in the past, the battery recycling business was mainly constrained by two factors:

One reason is that in the past, batteries had strong non-standard characteristics, which placed very high demands on processing technology. Not only do there exist differences between energy storage batteries and power batteries, but there are also diverse and complex varieties of raw materials, ranging from disposable batteries to lead-acid batteries, and then to lithium batteries for electronic devices.

Secondly, the scale demand for battery recycling is not large, and the input-output ratio is unclear, resulting in low actual economic benefits. Battery recycling is not only a technical business, but also an integrated business. Due to the highly dispersed market and small scale prospects, it has not had a very prominent head effect for many years. Instead, "small workshop" battery recycling manufacturers that wander on the legal edge are thriving.

According to research by TrendForce Consulting, with the rapid development of China's new energy vehicle industry, the retirement volume of power batteries has been increasing year by year. It is expected that the scrap volume of power batteries in China will exceed 18GWh in 2021 and reach 91GWh by 2025. The market size has reached 2.4 billion yuan in 2020, and it is estimated that the market size of China's waste power battery recycling will reach 26 billion yuan by 2025.

Due to the weak presence of regular army teams in the market, coupled with the foreseeable market prospects of battery recycling, more and more elite teams are starting to focus on this blue ocean.

Recently, CATL announced that the Bangpu integrated new energy industry project will officially start construction on December 4th, aiming to reduce costs by recycling and reusing retired batteries. At the same time, several lithium battery industry chain manufacturers such as Huayou Cobalt and Zhongwei Shares have also stated that they will gradually increase their layout of power battery recycling business.

Overseas, Nissan plans to establish new battery recycling factories in the United States and Europe before the end of fiscal year 2025; In the middle of this year, Battery Resourcers, a lithium battery recycling company, reached an agreement with Honda to recycle lithium batteries; At the same time, LG Energy Solutions and Eco Pro Group are beginning to commercialize their electric vehicle battery recycling business.

On the track densely populated with small workshops, the regular army is launching a massive attack, and everything seems to be ready to take off. But is this market really full of gold within reach?

Embarrassing hierarchical utilization

Liang Zhesheng told us that there are currently two mainstream modes of power battery recycling, not only the well understood dismantling and recycling, but also a very important mode, which is hierarchical utilization.

The recycling mode of hierarchical utilization is actually easy to understand, just like when the batteries of electric toys at home were phased out and the remote control could be reused for a period of time. It is actually an instinctive behavior of humans, essentially extending the service life of batteries by transferring demand.

Generally speaking, when the capacity of a power battery decays below 80% -70% of its rated capacity, it is no longer suitable for electric vehicles. But the range of 80% -20% is exactly where the blue ocean of cascading utilization of power batteries lies, which can still meet the energy storage or power needs in many scenarios.

Therefore, in the past, due to cost considerations, the hierarchical utilization of power batteries either flowed into black workshops that could "lower" the cost of dismantling and reassembly, or simply stopped considering the use of waste heat and directly dismantled and recycled them.

However, in August of this year, the "Management Measures for Tiered Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries" were introduced, which clearly pointed out the importance of tiered utilization for power battery recycling. "Encourage tiered utilization enterprises to develop and produce tiered products suitable for base station backup, energy storage, charging and swapping, and other fields. Encourage the adoption of commercial models such as leasing and large-scale utilization that facilitate the recycling of tiered products

Under the dual promotion of the implementation of corresponding management measures and the large-scale retirement of power batteries, the industry is also expected to usher in a turning point.

The game between "integration" and "technology"

Let's take a look at the seemingly more 'simple and crude' dismantling and recycling.

There are currently two mainstream process routes for dismantling and recycling, dry and wet methods. The former involves metallurgical pyrolysis, while the latter uses acid, alkali, or organic solvents. Of course, there are also many innovative methods, such as low-temperature freezing, biotechnology, etc., but they are generally not very mature, "Liang Zhesheng told us.

The specific process technology will not be elaborated here. The current embarrassment of dismantling and recycling mainly lies in the prominent problems of high energy consumption and low metal recovery rate in dry recycling, although it is simple to handle; Wet recycling will generate a large amount of wastewater, and its environmental friendliness is also poor. Overall, there is still no optimal solution and the results in the laboratory are yet to be released.