Author/Baked bun under the stars
Edit/Spinach Starry Sky
Typography/Fried liver under the stars
Entering the Year of the Tiger, in the context of the temple's decision to continue to open the floodgates and release water (monetary policy tools are larger and more powerful), and sending water to the door (the financial sector takes the initiative to attack and accurately exerts force), all walks of life should have leapt forward and tigers. But there is such an industry that is a bit of a tiger.
The industry I want to talk about is the power battery. At the end of the full life cycle of power batteries, that is, in the field of battery recycling, there are still various problems.
Power battery cycle diagram (CNKI)
In summary, the author believes that there are two main reasons:
1. The battery recycling network is not sound. A large number of decommissioned batteries will flow into informal channels, which may cause environmental pollution and even personal safety. After all, lithium-powered batteries contain 21 toxic pollutants, which are minefields everywhere.
2. Battery recycling enterprises are not large-scale. The main players of battery recycling have not yet formed a scale effect, some battery processes have not yet been perfected, and the recovery efficiency of resources still needs to be improved.
Write the question at the beginning, and don't be afraid. Before a large number of lithium batteries enter the ebb and flow period, the exposure problem is a good thing. Problem-oriented, goal-oriented, broken obstacles, make up for shortcomings, in order to better make the battery recycling industry healthy development. Today, the author will take you to take a good look at this industry.
First, the industry is indeed a good industry
The new energy automobile industry ushered in the first year of the Beijing Olympic Games. After more than a decade of rapid development, this year is already the last year of electric vehicle subsidies. The mainland has become the world's largest new energy vehicle manufacturing and power battery production country.
Sales of new energy vehicles (CAAM)
As the saying goes, to kill is to be buried. After all, the power battery is not a perpetual motion machine, and there will be a day of retirement after all. If we estimate the battery life of passenger cars of 5-8 years and the commercial vehicles of 3-5 years, the power batteries that will be put into production and market around 2015 may usher in a wave of ebb and flow.
According to this time point, the conservative estimate of battery retirement in 2021 is about 200,000 tons (about 25GWh), of which ternary lithium batteries account for 70% and lithium iron phosphate batteries account for 30% (the proportion of lithium iron phosphate batteries has increased because the commercial vehicles of bus companies have reached the time point of retirement this year and next year).
By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2025), the waste power batteries that need to be recycled in the mainland are expected to exceed 500,000 tons, which is more than 2.5 times that of last year, and from the perspective of growth rate alone, this is a very attractive cake.
If we look at the microscopic level, the recovery of lithium in lithium iron phosphate batteries is expected to reach 0.3 million tons in 2025, and lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese in ternary batteries can recover 0.6, 2.9, 0.9 and 10,000 tons respectively. There is lithium all over the world, and it is difficult to walk without lithium. In the context of the world's players paying more attention to white oil - lithium resources, the improvement of the recycling system can solve the urgent need.
Therefore, the importance of battery recycling is self-evident, and only by taking precautions can we not be in danger.
At least the policy side has already taken the lead. The big picture of carbon neutrality has been said to be rotten by everyone, and there is no need to say more. The double-credit policy, like a sword of Damocles, allows traditional automakers to pay more attention to producing cost-effective new energy vehicles as much as possible. The subdivision of battery recycling, in the past three years, the policy has been frequent, and most of the policies have been to formulate standards, starting from the top-level design, forcing the industry to step by step towards standardization.
Power battery related policies since 2017 (incomplete statistics)
Second, a hot "gold mine"
When an industry has only one voice, it needs to be vigilant. So, let's sing the opposite.
As mentioned above, about 200,000 tons of batteries were decommissioned last year. But do you know how many of these 200,000 tons are really recycled by formal channels? The answer is 2-5 million tons. There are two main reasons:
1. The recycling volume of informal enterprises is very large, to put it bluntly, it is to enter the black market.
2. There may not be 200,000 tons of batteries put on the market at all.
To talk more deeply about this topic, let's first briefly popularize the industrial chain of battery recycling. The upstream is the manufacturer of various types of batteries, the midstream is a third-party recycling agency, this link is also a small workshop, miscellaneous brand army place, the downstream is the battery reproduction and reuse enterprises, such as the cascade utilization in the field of energy storage (mainly the performance of electric vehicles to less than 80% of the battery detection, and then screening and reorganization after reuse), the current cascade utilization is more for decommissioned lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Power battery recycling industry chain
Battery dismantling and recycling in the midstream has become a vital part of the industrial chain. In general, there are three types of recycling technology: dry recovery, wet recycling and biological recovery, and each of the three types of methods has its own advantages and disadvantages. At present, the recovery rate of nickel, cobalt and manganese in the head enterprises has reached 95%, and the recovery rate of lithium can reach 85% (if there is no number of cycles and cost requirements, the recovery rate can theoretically reach 100%, but after all, the enterprise is not doing charity). Cobalt, nickel and other elements on the market are mainly extracted by wet method, while lithium elements generally use a combination of dry and wet methods.
Power battery recycling process classification and characteristics
From the perspective of battery recycling supply and demand, it is also in the current situation of overcapacity. According to the author's statistics, Temple has released the second batch of battery recycling enterprises white list in 2020, a total of 22 companies, the production capacity of major enterprises is more than 500,000 tons, much higher than the amount of decommissioned batteries 200,000 tons (not to mention the flow into the black market).
Lithium battery recycling related enterprises (company's official website)
At the same time, according to the author's understanding, the pricing model of battery recycling is nickel, the market price of the diamond multiplied by a discount coefficient, the price of lithium is converted into the discount coefficient, and now the discount coefficient has exceeded 100%. Therefore, when the price of upstream materials such as lithium carbonate is only maintained above a certain level, the economy of recycling players can be reflected. Taking the recovery of lithium carbonate in lithium iron phosphate as an example, the author roughly calculated that when the price of lithium carbonate is 260,000 / ton, the player can achieve breakeven.
Third, the future is beautiful, and the road is tortuous
Finally, the author would like to say that with the fire of the new energy automobile industry, the price of battery raw materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel has risen sharply, and the power battery after decommissioning has also become a sought-after commodity.
Head companies such as Ningwang, BYD and Grimme have laid out their layouts and strive to gain a first-mover advantage. However, the barbaric growth of the early stage of the industry will inevitably bring about the phenomenon of bad money expelling good money, and the phenomenon that the regular army cannot beat the miscellaneous card army is very obvious. Moreover, the sharing of power battery data and information has not been opened, and the problem of inconsistent measurement standards for battery residual value still exists.
Solving problems is always more important than avoiding problems, and we must not sit still and pin our hopes on sodium-ion batteries and hydrogen-powered batteries.
At present, the policy side has begun to preemptively attack, and the regular army must also unite more battery companies and vehicle manufacturers to let the decommissioned batteries re-enter the formal channels, form a scale effect and a virtuous circle, and meet the arrival of the new blue ocean market.
Note: This article does not constitute any investment advice. The stock market is risky, and you need to be cautious when entering the market. There is no harm in buying and selling.