Obviously, it is not a new thing, why in these two years, the establishment of a power battery recycling system has suddenly become an urgent thing?
Of course, because new energy vehicles have exploded.
The data shows that from 2015 to 2020, the annual installed capacity of power batteries in the mainland will increase from 16GWh to 63.6GWh, with an annual compound growth rate of more than 50%. According to data from the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the cumulative number of power batteries decommissioned in China in 2020 exceeded 200,000 tons (about 25GWh), and the market size reached 10 billion yuan [1].
However, what we see is only the tide.
Considering the average effective life of power batteries of 4-6 years and the service life of 5-8 years, combined with the rapid popularization of electric vehicles that began in 2014, at the end of 2021, we will usher in the first batch of retirement peaks.
However, the delivery volume of new energy vehicles at that time was not worth mentioning compared with that in recent years. By the end of 2020, the number of new energy vehicles in the mainland reached 4.92 million, of which 4 million were pure electric vehicles, and the increase in new energy vehicles exceeded 1 million for three consecutive years, while by October 2021, the domestic retail sales of new energy vehicles in the current period had exceeded 2.13 million [2].
The rapidly growing new energy vehicle market means that there is a huge pressure on the batch decommissioning of power batteries. It is estimated that the decommissioning of power batteries in mainland China will be close to 800,000 tons in 2025 [3]. This is already a number that cannot be ignored, if it cannot be properly disposed of, such a huge amount of decommissioned batteries is not only a waste of resources, but also a great harm to the environment.
Obviously, how to build a perfect power battery recycling chain has attracted widespread attention from the market. Through this article, the amplification lamp will solve the current situation of the development of the industry and the various dilemmas behind it.
It is recommended to read this article with the "After reading this article, lithium battery primer" previously released by the amplifying lamp, the experience is better
Chen Minlei | author
Plain sauce | edit
The magnifying light team | mastermind
Why recycle power batteries?
There are two main factors that promote the development of the power battery recycling industry: the demand for environmental protection and the economy of precious metal recycling.
As we all know, waste batteries are a kind of highly polluting garbage. In particular, the huge power battery, which contains a large number of heavy metals, electrolytes, solvents and various types of organic matter excipients, set a variety of highly toxic pollutants in one, improper disposal will seriously pollute the soil and water sources, but also produce toxic gas emissions.
Therefore, simple landfill or incineration is not suitable for handling decommissioned power batteries – and it is also a waste of resources.
First of all, although it is called "decommissioned" power batteries, it does not mean that the performance of these batteries is close to scrapping. In general, when the capacity of the power battery is attenuated to about 80% to 70% of the rated capacity, it is no longer suitable for electric vehicles, but in the range of 80% to 20%, the performance of the power battery can still meet the energy needs of many devices, only when the capacity drops to 20% after the mandatory scrap, which is also known as the energy value of the battery and then mined.
In addition to the energy value, the power battery also has material regeneration value. Taking the ternary battery, one of the two most mainstream battery routes at present, as an example, the cobalt metal used is a very rare metal element, the crustal content is low, the distribution is very concentrated, and it is mainly distributed in the African region where the productivity is lagging behind, and the cobalt mine has long been trapped in unstable production capacity, often affected by various external factors, such as the interference of the local political situation. This leads to the price of cobalt not rising, a rise is directly to the supply chain to die, so it got a "cobalt grandmother" nickname.
It is precisely because of the price of cobalt that many car companies currently choose to use 811 ternary batteries (nickel-cobalt-manganese ratio of 8:1:1), or even cobalt-free batteries (such as Tesla), or can not afford to hide, directly transform lithium iron phosphate batteries.
As more and more car companies announce the complete abandonment of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles and the transformation of electric vehicles, as well as the timetable set by many countries to electrify or ban traditional internal combustion engine vehicles in 2050 to achieve carbon emission targets, it may also promote the price of nickel, lithium and other metal elements that are not rare metals to remain at a high level, and the establishment of a mature recycling system is also of positive significance to alleviate current and future supply chain problems.
Two reuse routes
In general, two more common words to describe the reuse direction of power batteries are "dismantling and recycling" and "cascade utilization". Although the two are far apart, for the power battery recycling industry, they are typically complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
In February 2017, the state issued the "Interim Measures for the Management of Recycling and Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries", which mentioned that battery manufacturers are encouraged to cooperate with comprehensive utilization enterprises to carry out multi-level and multi-purpose rational utilization of waste power batteries in accordance with the principle of first-tier utilization and recycling after first-step utilization.
Therefore, the most ideal power battery recycling industry is to find other application scenarios for decommissioned power batteries to continue to serve, and then disassemble and recover valuable metal elements after they are completely useless.
Figure丨Wanlian Securities[4]
However, due to many influences, the dismantling and recycling route at this stage is far more mature than the cascade utilization route, and the reality is often that the decommissioned battery is directly scrapped without any reuse, the reason for which we will elaborate on later.
Dismantle and recycle
At this stage, there are two mainstream processing processes for dismantling and recycling: fire recovery and wet recovery.
Pyrotechnic recovery, also known as incineration or dry metallurgy, is to remove the organic binder in the electrode material by high temperature incineration, and at the same time to redox the metal and its compounds in it, recover the low boiling point metal and its compound in the form of condensation, and recover the metal in the slag by screening, pyrolysis, magnetic separation or chemical methods.
Figure丨 Everbright Securities[5]
The advantages of this process are that it can handle a wide range of raw materials, a large processing volume, a simple process, and the battery does not need to be pre-treated. However, fire recovery is ultimately a relatively primary recovery process, such as high energy consumption, low metal recovery rate, high equipment requirements, recycled metal needs to be further refined, will produce toxic and harmful gases and other issues. Especially because in the process of fire recovery, lithium and aluminum remain in the smelting slag, further extraction and recovery is not economical, which leads to the fire route often can not recover lithium, resulting in waste of resources, this defect in today's lithium prices are at a high level of the current become particularly prominent.
The wet recovery technology is to use various acid and alkaline solutions as the transfer medium to transfer metal ions from the electrode material to the leachate, and then extract the metal ions from the solution in the form of salts and oxides through ion exchange, precipitation, adsorption and other means. This route is currently the mainstream recycling process in China.
Compared with the fire method route, the wet recovery process is more complex, but it is widely used in industry for the recovery and reuse of valuable metals with advantages such as high efficiency and less harmful exhaust gas emissions, low energy consumption, high purity of the resulting metal or metal salt, and mild reaction conditions. The purity of its final product can meet the quality requirements of the production of power battery materials, especially suitable for ternary batteries where metal raw materials are more expensive. The disadvantage of the wet process is that the battery cells must be broken and pretreated, the reagent consumption is large, and a large amount of wastewater that needs to be treated subsequently will be generated.
In order to further extract and extract metal elements from alloys or smelting slag, a process of combining fire recovery and wet recovery was born. The combined fire-wet recycling technology refers to the recycling of the battery cathode material by high temperature smelting, leaching and oxidation, high temperature sintering and other processes after simple pretreatment disassembly and discharge of the waste lithium battery system. However, compared with the single recycling route, the process of joint recycling is more complex, has a high technical threshold, and has fewer enterprises with the ability to layout, the most representative of which is the Val'Eas process adopted by Umicore.
In recent years, in addition to the traditional recycling process, in recent years, there has also been an electrode repair and regeneration process. This route is to disassemble and separate the electrode material in the waste lithium-ion battery, use electrochemical or physicochemical methods to process, restore its damaged structure, electrochemical properties, so that the material can be used again for use or as a precursor to the preparation of new electrode materials.
The recovery processes mentioned above are also known as chemical methods, and there are corresponding physical and biological methods, but for various reasons, these processes are very rare. Physical methods include crushing flotation and mechanical grinding, but the separation efficiency of valuable metals is extremely low, the economic benefits are poor, and the basic premise of commercialization is lacking. The law of biology is to use microbial microorganisms to catabolize and metabolize metal ions selectively to achieve separation from impurities, and finally recover valuable metals. However, biotechnology is currently immature, only staying in the laboratory stage, and there is no small distance from large-scale commercialization.
Echelon utilization
After talking about dismantling and recycling, let's talk about the use of the ladder.
The cascade utilization of waste batteries refers to the process in which the power battery can continue to be used in a suitable working position by repairing, modifying or remanufacturing it when it reaches the design service life. After the decommissioned power battery is tested and its performance is determined, it can be used in the field of low-power electric vehicles, grid energy storage, and household energy storage in turn, and after the battery performance is further deteriorated, it is lower than the minimum utilization standard and then recycled.
Interestingly, at present, the iconic enterprises used by the domestic echelon do not appear in the industry, but cross-border Chinese towers. The recycling model of China Tower lies in the cooperation with car companies and power battery manufacturers to use decommissioned power batteries for emergency power supply of base stations. As early as 2015, China Tower carried out cascade utilization of more than 3,000 base stations in 12 provinces and cities, replacing the older lead-acid batteries with lithium batteries with more advanced processes; by 2018, China Tower had stopped purchasing lead-acid batteries and carried out cascade utilization nationwide [6].
But that's about it. To this day, the model of the Chinese tower is still the most representative echelon utilization, and the overall development of the route is slow, as to why we will talk later.
If we shift our attention to the two most mainstream technical routes of power lithium batteries, we can also find that their respective suitable recycling routes are also different.
In short, ternary batteries are suitable for disassembly and recycling, and lithium iron phosphate is more suitable for cascade utilization.
This is mainly because from an economic point of view, the metal (nickel lithium cobalt) in the ternary material has a high recovery value, while lithium iron phosphate has some problems due to lithium recovery, and the economy is relatively poor. This makes the price of ternary battery recycled products have a significant advantage, can bring enough profit margins to enterprises, past data show that the total profit of recycling a single ton of ternary waste batteries is about 6355 yuan / ton, under the same conditions, the recovery of a single ton of lithium iron phosphate waste battery loss of about 312 yuan / ton [7].
The reason why lithium iron phosphate battery is suitable for cascade utilization, in addition to the poor economic benefits of the material it recovers at this stage, is also because its cycle life does have advantages. As far as the most common energy storage is used in the echelon, the importance of battery performance is actually not high, but the cost performance is more important. Although the purchase price of decommissioned ternary batteries is higher than that of lithium iron phosphate batteries, this is mainly because of the metal recovery value, the difference in cycle life and energy density between the two is not enough to cover additional expenditures, and the safety of ternary batteries is not as good as that of lithium iron phosphate batteries. Under multiple factors, it is determined that lithium iron phosphate is more suitable for cascade utilization rather than direct disassembly.
Who are the participants?
Affected by factors such as sales methods, use forms, and technical routes, the participants in the power battery recycling industry are more complicated.
Referring to the existing industrial chain model, the path of power battery recycling from consumers to battery manufacturers can be roughly divided into three categories:
1. Recycling through electric vehicle dealers;
2. Recycling through the battery rental company, the final flow of the battery of the route and the previous route and the participant responsible for recycling are all power battery manufacturers;
3. Waste batteries flow to third-party recycling companies, recycling outlets need to be established independently, and the final recycling processing is also completed by third-party companies.
Driven by three basic recycling routes, the power battery recycling industry has formed four basic models, which also represent the four main forms of participant organization:
1, new energy vehicle manufacturers as the main body: the model can use the existing sales network of car companies to mobilize the enthusiasm for recycling, the coverage of outlets is relatively large, but the defect is that the sales outlets are not professional, lack of disposal capacity of power batteries, there are certain safety hazards;
2, the battery manufacturer as the main body: the advantage of this model is that the battery manufacturer is highly professional, can be the recovered battery for appropriate disposal, but the corresponding need to establish a recycling network, there are additional operating costs, and the battery manufacturer's management experience is lacking;
3, third-party enterprises as the main body: the advantage of this model is that participants have more experience in recycling operations, recycling efficiency is higher, but the corresponding cost is also high, and the financial status of enterprises in the industry is generally not optimistic;
4, the industry alliance as the main body: this new energy field in the car companies, third parties, battery manufacturers jointly form an industrial alliance model advantage is that it can form an effective complementarity, all parties give full play to their own advantages, but the key lies in its early development is extremely difficult, management difficulty is also very complex, need multi-party consultation, will face complex ridicule and interest distribution.
Figure丨 Soochow Securities[7]
Why can't it be done?
The above has talked about why the power battery is recycled, how to recycle, and who will recycle it. But this article is to end, to the power battery industry to pour a basin of cold water, and even say that ice water is more appropriate -
No matter how positive the power battery is, it has an extremely fatal flaw, that is, the economic benefits are not high, the commercialization potential is poor, resulting in the entire industry to this day is seriously stunted.
First of all, the power battery recycling is extremely non-standardized, because the power battery itself is a non-standard product, there are many models, only the package has square, round, soft package and in recent years, the new "blade battery" and "CTP battery" and many other routes. The internal structure of different technical routes is very different, and the corresponding processing methods will be different; even if the batteries of the same packaging route, the different products produced by different enterprises are not the same in materials and designs, and even the power batteries equipped with different models of the same enterprise are also different, and it is necessary to formulate a targeted recycling process according to the actual situation.
Further, even if it is the same type of battery, due to the different habits of the owner, the residual performance of the battery is not consistent, and further detection and classification are still needed in subsequent utilization.
The complex situation of waste batteries has led to a high degree of non-standardized operating processes and diversified technical needs, which has spawned an extremely complex process of battery recycling, which seriously restricts the scale of the industry.
Secondly, although the route of power battery recycling is very clear, knowing where the road is and how to go are two completely different concepts.
Ladder utilization problem
Above, we have repeatedly mentioned that the use of cascades is a very immature route, mainly because the route still faces many difficulties at both the technical and market levels.
First of all, from a technical point of view, the echelon utilization needs to fully evaluate and test the decommissioned power battery to determine its performance. After testing and screening, the decommissioned batteries can be recombined according to different uses, stabilize the voltage and current of the recombined battery pack, and finally repackage and put into use. However, the current battery life prediction model based on the analysis of capacity attenuation mechanism is not perfect at first, and the first link of the entire chain is not passed, and it is obviously unrealistic to expect the industry to have a long-term development.
Secondly, from the perspective of the market, the economic benefits of cascade utilization are indeed not good. The reverse logistics system involved is quite complex, and there are many intermediate links, which is far more troublesome than direct dismantling and recycling, and it is not as convenient as direct recycling. And the complex process seriously piles up the cost of cascade utilization batteries, and even the strange phenomenon of restructuring batteries and new batteries upside down in price - the old is more expensive than the new, how can downstream buyers be persuaded to choose cascade utilization products?
Finally, the safety of the ladder utilization does not dare to compliment. The safety performance of the current power battery has always been a significant problem, and many hidden dangers are accumulated during use, such as the deformation of the internal structure caused by the crystallization of ions in the solution, etc. It is obviously irresponsible to claim that the old battery is safer than the new battery. This makes it difficult to persuade consumers to accept cascade utilization products on the consumer side.
Even at the national level, there are doubts about the safety of cascade utilization. In June this year, the National Energy Administration issued the "New Energy Storage Project Management Specifications (Interim) (Draft for Comments)", and the draft for comments made it clear that only before the key breakthroughs in battery consistency management technology and the improvement of the power battery performance monitoring and evaluation system, in principle, large-scale power battery cascade utilization energy storage projects should not be built [8].
It should be known that energy storage is already the most promising application scenario for cascade utilization, but this is a blow from the country, or it reminds the industry that it cannot be happy too soon.
Problems with dismantling recycling
As for dismantling and recycling, we cannot ignore that upstream raw materials are in an upward cycle in these two years, which does not mean that it will always be in an upward cycle.
In the case of cobalt, for example, although it has experienced a period of extremely crazy rise in the past period of time, it is actually far from the high level in early 2018. And the recent surge in raw material prices is inseparable from the global supply chain-logistics crisis caused by the epidemic, although we cannot predict when the crisis will ease, but it is a risk that cannot be ignored.
When the price of raw materials gradually falls, the already poor profit margins of the battery recycling industry will inevitably be further squeezed.
Even if the price of these metal raw materials is irreversibly maintained at a higher price due to supply chain problems, for car companies, it is actually not without choice, nothing more than switching from ternary batteries to lithium iron phosphate. Although this will make a certain sacrifice in performance, there is nothing unacceptable for the traditional manufacturing industry of automobiles, which is extremely cost-effective and has a small profit margin, not to mention the breakthrough in battery technology and structural design.
In this way, the commercial prospects of battery recycling, which are not strong, are undoubtedly darker.
What's worse is that industries that don't make money in the first place continue to be poisoned by "black-hearted enterprises". Yes, battery recycling is still a hapless industry that is deeply affected by irregular and unqualified "small workshops".
First of all, the compliance of power batteries is complex and there are many review conditions, resulting in a very high entry threshold for the industry.
How high? In 2018 and 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology twice issued a list of enterprises that meet the conditions of the comprehensive utilization of new energy vehicle waste power batteries industry specifications, divided into two categories of cascade utilization and recycling, which is commonly known as the white list of enterprises, the number of which is enough - 27 (the first batch of 5, the second batch of 22), compared with hundreds of thousands of tons and still climbing decommissioned batteries, far from meeting the demand. The market that has been vacant has naturally become the breeding ground for non-compliant enterprises.
Secondly, it must be admitted that power battery recycling is a rather troublesome thing, whether it is to eliminate environmental pollution, or to treat the classification of batteries, which means cost, and small workshops obviously have no burden in this regard.
Compared with the cumbersome recycling process of regular enterprises, unqualified small workshops usually use manual methods to violently dismantle battery packs, and the sorting process is extremely primitive, which not only has great harm to the health of employees, but also accompanies great safety hazards - to know that the power battery that is not fully discharged will really explode. In the follow-up process, small workshops will obviously not be restricted by environmental impact assessment, and often directly discharge or landfill waste without harmless waste, such as waste liquid, slag, etc., which will cause serious pollution to the surrounding environment.
Ignoring the environmental impact assessment and safety assessment greatly reduces the operating cost of these small workshops, bringing them a huge advantage in recovery quotations. According to the Economic Observer, some unqualified battery recycling companies, the quotation of ternary lithium batteries is as high as 15,000 yuan / ton, and even the lower value of lithium iron phosphate batteries is as high as 12,000 yuan / ton. In contrast, the recycling price of formal enterprises is only about 10,000 yuan / ton, or even lower, and the competitiveness of the two sides is not at the same order of magnitude at all [9].
Under such asymmetric confrontation, there is a situation where regular enterprises cannot receive batteries and are difficult to sustain, and most of the decommissioned batteries are unknown. According to industry estimates, about 80% of the power batteries have flowed directly into the recycling chain of non-compliant enterprises and disappeared into small workshops [10]. The lack of supply has even led to formal enterprises being forced to purchase old power batteries from the black market in order to obtain batteries to maintain the operation of production lines and business growth. Formal enterprises have been forced to become one of the promoters of the black market prosperity, and it has to be said that it is also an aggressive and strange thing.
With the large-scale decommissioning of ternary batteries with higher recycling value, it is foreseeable that this kind of "bad money expelling good money" will become more and more intense. What the entire industry needs is strong support from the policy level, whether it is a more mature chain of custody, a strong crackdown on illegal recycling enterprises, or subsidies for formal enterprises, which has a very positive significance for the entire industry.
Of course, that's another topic.
References：
Wang Linlin: The recycling price of waste power batteries is 10,000 yuan per ton, and nearly 80% of them flow into the black market. Beijing News.2021.07.16
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZEO9-OcMuXYkpyPjZ1CgxA
[2] Passenger Car Association: [Monthly Analysis] October 2021 National Passenger Car Market Analysis.2021.11.08
http://www.cpcaauto.com/newslist.php?types=csjd&id=2602
[3] Yao Xueqing: Better cracking the power battery recycling problem| people's times. People's Daily Comment.2021.06.08
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/RXvpSHENk5kxee4PDW5wrw
[4] Wanlian Securities: In-depth report of electrical equipment industry: power storage dual drive, lithium iron phosphate volume and price rise.2021.09.15
[5] Everbright Securities: Carbon Neutrality Depth Report of Power Equipment New Energy and Environmental Protection Industries (4): Power Battery Recycling, Cost Reduction and Breakthrough of Lithium Constraint, Constituting a Closed Loop of Lithium Battery Cycle.2021.03.24
[6] Wei Wenzhu: [Micro-Hong Power Gaogong Focus] China Tower Decommissioned Power Battery Cascade Utilization "Raiders".Gaogong Lithium Battery.2019.06.07
https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/XjkQyqlwsRbXsQyM6-2pug
[7] Soochow Securities: Power battery regeneration ushered in a long cycle of high prosperity, and the leading automotive aftermarket actively laid out a big step into the market.2021.09.20
[8] National Energy Administration: New Energy Storage Project Management Specification (Provisional) (Draft for Comments).
http://www.nea.gov.cn/1310021541_16243514280981n.pdf
[9] Zhou Ju: The "black river" of battery recycling,Economic Observer.2019.09.12 https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/YzuJeXf45MNVNTbBFwk4ZA
[10] Zhao Yuhan: The number of new energy vehicles is growing rapidly, where do decommissioned batteries go?
Beijing Daily.2021.08.24
https://www.chinanews.com.cn/cj/2021/08-24/9549999.shtml
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