According to reports, the European Union recently proposed new regulations on EV battery recycling, requiring batteries to be shipped back to the country of production for disposal after they are scrapped. All of a sudden, it also set off a crazy discussion in the industry.
After all, we all know that the EU's move seems to be a reasonable request from the perspective of environmental protection, but the essence behind it is not only worried that battery cars will indeed cause environmental pollution, but also to protect the European fuel vehicle industry chain, thus setting a higher threshold for electric vehicles, and this is undoubtedly not good news for China's electric vehicles, and even many netizens said that "foreigners have a lot of tricks" and "too small" and so on.
I have to admit that domestic new energy vehicles have exploded in the past two years, and many Chinese brands have achieved "corner overtaking" by relying on this track. However, as new energy vehicles enter the fast lane of development, the production and scrapping of batteries behind them are also a big problem, because if they are not done well, they may be a big pollution. Therefore, even if the EU does not set such regulations, how to recycle end-of-life batteries is still a topic that everyone will have to face sooner or later.
Just like the mobile phone battery that everyone uses, once a few years have passed, the energy stored in the battery will continue to deplete, resulting in the battery running out of power after a short time. Therefore, when using mobile phones, everyone often encounters the phenomenon of replacing batteries, and electric vehicles are no exception. According to industry insiders, the service life of general automotive power batteries is 5-8 years, that is to say, when it reaches a certain age, the power batteries of new energy vehicles will be at the critical point of elimination.
According to the data of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China, the total number of "retired" power batteries in mainland China will exceed 580,000 tons in 2023; By 2030, the number of power battery retirements may increase to 3.5 million tons. There is no doubt that the huge number of end-of-life batteries will give rise to a new market hotspot in the future. However, for the present, how to recycle the scrapped batteries of new energy vehicles is a more urgent issue.
You must know that although the lithium power batteries commonly used in electric vehicles do not contain the widely criticized heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, from a technical point of view, in addition to "lithium", there are still heavy metals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese in its electrolyte, and the electrolyte and fluorine-containing organic compounds are also polluted. Moreover, the pollution threat of lithium power batteries also lies in the back-end processing link after it is scrapped. If it is not properly recycled, it is also very likely to repeat the mistakes of lead-acid batteries in the past, causing serious pollution to the environment.
In addition, after being scrapped, it still has a high voltage ranging from 300-1000V, and improper operation in the process of recycling, dismantling and disposal may still have a variety of problems such as fire and explosion, heavy metal pollution, and organic waste emissions. Compared with traditional mercury and cadmium batteries, lithium batteries do have less pollution, but they are by no means negligible, let alone thrown away, after all, no one can be responsible for this unknown consequence.
So the blue ocean of this market is so big, why is it still very difficult to recycle power batteries? According to the data of enterprise investigation, there are 40,600 power battery recycling-related enterprises in mainland China, while the white list of power battery recycling enterprises is only 156. At the same time, the "echelon utilization" technology in the current idealized state of the industry is not mature enough, because there is no unified standard for automotive power batteries until now, resulting in different manufacturers' power batteries in terms of materials, formulas, specifications and structures, etc., so there are more battery models and scattered output, which brings considerable difficulty to echelon utilization. In addition, there is no unified standard for the dismantling, recycling, and utilization of power batteries, which also leads to potential safety hazards in this process.
Write at the end
It is undeniable that the development of new energy vehicles is to be able to be "green and environmentally friendly", but the battery pollution that may be brought about after the development is also worth pondering. Therefore, in the face of the fact that the current power battery has not entered the wrong scrapping field to a large extent, it is imperative to do a good job in battery recycling and other related work. Do you have any good insights into end-of-life battery recycling? How to solve battery pollution?
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