With the rapid growth of the number of new energy vehicles in mainland China, the number of power batteries decommissioned is also gradually rising, and in 2022, the first batch of power batteries put into the market ushered in a "retirement wave". According to data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, as of 2020, the cumulative number of decommissioned power batteries in China will exceed 200,000 tons, and in the next five years, the data will be as high as 800,000 tons.
Relevant practitioners said that the power battery is a consumable, the performance decays with the number of charges, when the actual capacity of the battery decays to less than 80% of the rated capacity, it is no longer suitable for vehicles, passenger cars may be shorter.
There are reports that a Finnish owner bought a 2012 international famous brand electric used car, after driving 1500 kilometers after the problem, the dealer told the owner that there is no way to replace the battery, and the cost of replacing the battery is at least 20,000 euros, and the second-hand market price of this car is only about 35,000 euros. Therefore, the high cost of replacing the battery makes it difficult for most car owners to accept, and it has also become a major pain point for new energy vehicles.
Environmental pollution can not be ignored, experts said that a 20-gram mobile phone battery can make 1 square kilometer of land polluted for about 50 years, a larger power battery, if there is no scientific recycling, will cause a huge ecological and environmental disaster.
The power battery contains heavy metals such as cobalt, manganese and nickel, and cannot degrade by itself. Taking manganese as an example, it will cause pollution to the air, water, soil, etc., when the manganese in the air exceeds 500 micrograms / cubic meter, it can cause manganese poisoning; such as drinking water with a higher manganese content, the central nervous system of people will be damaged, and even tremors, mental decline and other poisoning symptoms may occur. Lithium hexafluorophosphate in the electrolyte is easily hydrolyzed in the air environment to produce harmful substances such as phosphorus pentafluoride and hydrogen fluoride, which may pose a greater threat to the environment.
With a large number of new energy vehicle power batteries entering the scrapping link, how to deal with decommissioned batteries has become an imminent development problem. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has successively issued and implemented a series of policies such as the Interim Measures for the Management of the Recycling and Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries and the Administrative Measures for the Echelon Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries.
Luo Junjie, director of the Operation Monitoring and Coordination Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, once said that doing a good job in the recycling of power batteries is of great significance for protecting the ecological environment and social security, improving the comprehensive utilization of resources, and at the same time promoting the healthy development of the new energy automobile industry.
Decommissioned batteries, which can be both energy carriers and heavy environmental burdens, are being rooted in the search for a disruptive and innovative technology for battery cycle life.
In October 2020, the international environmental organization GreenPeace and the All-China Environmental Protection Federation jointly released the "For Resource Endurance: 2030 New Energy Vehicle Battery Circular Economy Potential Research Report", which pointed out that by 2030, the power batteries of passenger electric vehicles around the world will face a large-scale decommissioning of a total of 463GWh. In order to alleviate the crisis of the global "lithium battery garbage dump", the Swiss AGV equipment manufacturing enterprise has long used Gree titanium batteries as the power battery of its AGV smart car.
The relevant person in charge said, "There are many types of power batteries, but we do not want to make more 'waste' batteries, only Gree titanium batteries can achieve ultra-low temperature multi-scene, long life and low displacement, fast charging and high efficiency, while taking into account safety and reliability!" It is also of great significance for protecting the ecological environment and social security and improving the comprehensive utilization of resources. ”
According to the data, the structure of lithium titanate material is stable, in the process of charging and discharging, lithium ion embedding and de-embedding will not cause changes in the crystalline structure, known as "zero strain material", which makes the battery high safety at the same time, but also improves the cycle performance and service life of the electrode. In the GREE titanium detection center recognized by CNAS, a group of Gree titanium batteries have passed the deep charge and discharge cycle test more than 38,000 times, and the experimental data shows that its attenuation is only 8%.
According to the calculation data, the Gree titanium battery used in Beijing buses has been more than 7 years, its power attenuation rate is up to less than 5%, and the battery capacity retention rate is still above 95%, which solves the problems of serious battery attenuation after several years of traditional lithium battery new energy bus operation, inability to meet the operation of the whole day, and the need to increase the cost of replacing the battery.
Gree titanium battery service life of up to 30 years, to a new energy vehicle life of 10 years, in the vehicle life after the end of life of the power battery to recover, Gree titanium battery can continue to be used in major energy storage fields for up to 20 years. That is to say, Gree titanium batteries with 30-year cycle life characteristics can not only be widely used for the first time in new energy vehicles, households, industries, rail transit, military energy storage and other fields, even if they are recycled for secondary use, there is still "ultra-long working age".
Li Li, inspector of the Department of Energy Conservation and Comprehensive Utilization of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, believes that the development of the pure electric vehicle industry is the general trend of industrial development in the mainland, battery recycling is a major topic of energy conservation and environmental protection, and the 30-year long life cycle and recycling of Gree titanium batteries are worth further exploration.
The author believes that the environmentally friendly performance of Gree titanium battery "ultra-long vitality" effectively alleviates the ecological crisis brought about by the "decommissioning tide" of new energy vehicle batteries, has broader market prospects and application value, and is a better choice to help the construction of green ecological civilization.