At present, my country’s cumulative production of new energy vehicles has exceeded 2.8 million, ranking first in the world. The total supporting capacity of my country’s power batteries exceeds 900,000 tons, and more waste batteries are accompanied by them. Improper disposal of old batteries will cause serious environmental pollution and harm to human health.

According to the forecast of the China Automotive Technology Research Center, the total amount of waste power batteries will reach 120,000 to 200,000 tons from 2018 to 2020; by 2025, the annual scrap volume of power lithium batteries may reach 350,000 tons, showing an upward trend year by year .

In August 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the “Interim Regulations on the Traceability Management of the Recovery and Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles”, which came into effect on August 1, 2018. Automobile manufacturers shall bear the main responsibility for the recycling and utilization of power batteries. Automobile recycling and dismantling companies, tiered utilization companies, and recycling companies must perform corresponding responsibilities in all aspects of power battery recycling.

According to agency analysis, the service life of electric vehicle batteries produced in early 2014 is generally 5-8 years. According to the sales and use time of new energy vehicles, the first batch of electric vehicle batteries on the market has reached the critical point of being eliminated.

At present, most of the important materials on the market are cobalt, lithium, nickel, etc. With the increase in market demand, the economic benefits are also huge. According to WIND data, in the third quarter of 2018, the average price of lithium carbonate was about 114,000 yuan/ton, and the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate was 80-85 yuan/ton.

What can the recycled lithium battery do?

When the capacity of the old power battery decays below 80%, the car can no longer drive normally. However, there is still surplus energy that can be used in other fields such as energy storage and distributed photovoltaic power generation. The demand for communication base stations is large and can absorb most of the waste power lithium batteries. Data shows that the scale of investment in global mobile communication base stations in 2017 is expected to reach 52.9 billion yuan, an increase of 4.34% year-on-year.

Favorable policies help recycling companies to seize industry outlets

Let’s take the China Tower as an example. The China Tower provides communication base station construction and operation services for communication operators. The operation of the communication tower is based on backup power sources. An important part of this kind of backup power used to be lead-acid batteries. The Iron Tower Company purchases about 100,000 tons of lead-acid batteries each year, but lead-acid batteries have some disadvantages, such as short service life, low performance, and also contain a large amount of heavy metal lead. , If it is discarded, it is easy to cause secondary pollution to the environment if it is not handled properly.

In addition to purchasing new lithium batteries as power sources, China Tower has also tested thousands of base station batteries in 12 provinces and cities across the country to replace lead-acid batteries. As of the end of 2018, about 120,000 base stations in 31 provinces and cities across the country have used them. The trapezoidal battery of about 1.5GWh replaces about 45,000 tons of lead-acid batteries.

In addition, GEM is actively preparing for the post-subsidy era of new energy vehicles. Through cascade utilization and material recycling, GEM has built a full life cycle value chain system for recycling battery packs and recycling materials for new energy vehicles. Hubei GEM Co., Ltd. built an intelligent and non-destructive dismantling line for waste electric power, and developed liquid-phase synthesis and high-temperature synthesis processes. The spherical cobalt powder produced can be directly used in the production of battery cathode materials.

Is the scrapped power battery effective?

Judging from the effect of the company’s current use, not only the Tower Company, but also the State Grid Daxing and Zhangbei have built a demonstration center in Beijing. Beijing Automotive and New Energy Battery Co. have cooperated to develop energy storage power station projects and containerized energy storage projects. Shenzhen BYD, The retired batteries of Langfang High-tech Company are battery products arranged in the field of use. Wuxi GEM and SF Express are exploring the use of battery vehicles in urban logistics vehicles. Zhongtianhong Lithium and others have promoted the use of battery vehicles in vehicles such as sanitation and tourism through the leasing model.

In order to standardize this industry, relevant departments have also begun to establish a power battery recycling system, and run a national integrated management platform for new energy vehicle monitoring and power battery recycling and traceability. Up to now, 393 automobile production enterprises, 44 scrapped automobile recycling and dismantling enterprises, 37 echelon utilization enterprises and 42 recycling enterprises have joined the national platform.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has also decided to carry out pilot recycling projects in 17 regions including Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and Shanghai, as well as domestic steel tower enterprises. “Beck New Energy, GAC Mitsubishi and other 45 companies have set up a total of 3204 recycling service outlets, mainly in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, and the central region with a large number of new energy vehicles.

However, as a new industry, the road ahead is definitely not smooth. The biggest difficulties include the technical bottleneck of recycling that has yet to be broken through, the recycling system has not yet been formed, and the difficulty of recycling profitability. In this regard, it is necessary to improve the supporting policy support system, introduce diversified incentive measures, so that enterprises can taste benefits, give full play to the role of market players, accelerate the improvement of the recycling system, and form multiple forces.

According to the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the current recycling technology is relatively mature, but key technologies and equipment such as the efficient extraction of valuable metals need to be improved. The pollution prevention level of the dismantling and treatment of waste power batteries needs to be improved. The recycling of lithium iron phosphate batteries is facing a problem of poor economy.

In the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will make full use of the existing industrial bases for scrapped automobiles, electronic and electrical dismantling, and non-ferrous metallurgy, and coordinate the layout of power battery recycling enterprises to promote the sustainable development of the industry.

Through favorable policies and the multi-strength deployment of battery recycling by market enterprises, a complete and standardized industrial chain is expected to be formed in the future.