Who should be responsible for the battery recycling of new energy vehicles?

Recently, the Beijing city passenger car index regulation and management office issued this year the second motor vehicle index application has attracted attention from all walks of life. Originally, as of April 8, 24 hours, Beijing passenger car index application website received a total of personal new energy passenger car configuration index application and confirmed the number of extension has exceeded 230,000. According to the existing rules and quota allocation, the new energy index will be ranked until 2023.

There was much talk of waiting until 2019 to buy a new energy car, but that may now be delayed by another four years. The popularity of new energy vehicles is evident.

Although the new energy vehicle sales volume presents the explosive growth, lets the new energy vehicle prospect look like a bright, but the new energy vehicle whether further realizes the leap type development, how its core component battery effective recovery, the processing has become the industry inevitable question.

Who is responsible for battery recycling

According to the energy conservation and new energy vehicle technology roadmap issued by the ministry of industry and information technology in October 2016, China's new energy vehicle production will reach 4 million in 2025 and 10 million in 2030. What follows is an increase in the demand for the power batteries that new energy vehicles carry. According to statistics, shipments in the power battery market were 0.79 GWH in 2013, but surged to 39.2 GWH in 2017.

However, since the new energy vehicles entered the market, the power battery has entered the peak period of recycling and processing. How to recycle batteries, whether they can be effectively reused and who should be responsible for the whole life cycle of power batteries have become the focus of the academic and industrial circles, as well as the hot issues concerned by numerous electric vehicle users.

At the end of last year, zhu weihua, deputy secretary-general of the automotive information service committee of the China association of automobile manufacturers and secretary-general of beidou automotive network certification alliance, pointed out to the media that the battery recycling problem of new energy vehicles: "at present, the residual value of energy vehicles produced after five years of use is only 20%, battery recycling is a must for car companies.

Zhu weihua's cognition of the responsible person for battery recovery and treatment is very consistent with the government's management ideas. In October 2017, the interim measures for the administration of recycling and utilization of new energy vehicle power batteries submitted by China to the wto attracted media attention. Among them, the power battery design, production and recycling responsibility to be clear, pointed out that "the automobile production enterprises will assume the main responsibility of power battery recycling, to ensure the effective use of power battery and environmental protection disposal."

The regulations clearly outline the responsibilities for the design, access, production and recycling of power batteries. The basic idea is that the recycling of power batteries depends on car companies. As miao wei, minister of industry and information technology, said, "automobile manufacturers are responsible for the recycling of batteries."

Clear responsibility, the new energy electric vehicle battery recycling problem becomes simple. "New energy battery recycling is very simple, it is a battery pack or battery pack, rather than batteries, so after the battery scrap, can be directly removed to recycling company, let them take apart the battery pack, to test the battery core, conform to the standard can be recycled, do not conform to the standard as the waste batteries to plant." China battery industry association vice - chairman wang minzhong told reporters.

Reclaiming is more reprocessing

In fact, in the opinion of experts, the recycling of power batteries is not a complicated and difficult process, as long as the relevant companies take the initiative to assume responsibility, the whole recycling process can be orderly. For the treatment of power batteries, the difficulty lies in the process after recycling -- disposal of scrapped batteries.

"It is not a problem to recycle the batteries of electric vehicles, the key problem is to deal with it, and the disposal of scrapped batteries is still a problem." "Wang said. In the opinion of experts, after battery recycling, if the scrapped batteries are not effectively disposed of, and the batteries are not actively tracked by cascade utilization, then "recycling is useless".

The current management method aims to actively encourage enterprises to recycle and reuse power batteries, and actively extract the effective value for recycling, but it is not clear about the provision of scrapped batteries with low value. "" the management measures are only proposed and will be handled according to the national environmental protection measures. The problem, Mr. Wang said, is the country's lack of environmental standards.

Such a loophole is obviously not conducive to the environmental protection of waste batteries. As we all know, the power battery contains lithium, cobalt, nickel and other metallic elements, if not in accordance with the strict environmental protection standards to deal with the abandoned power battery, let it into the natural environment or arbitrarily non-standard treatment, bring environmental damage is difficult to estimate. This has been the most concerned about new energy vehicles.

"So our advice to the state is to deal with what works and what doesn't." In wang's view, every by-product of a waste battery that goes into an environmentally friendly treatment plant has to be treated.

For example, when a waste lead acid battery enters a treatment plant, all the components such as sulfuric acid need to be extracted, and only recycled plastics are left, and there is no other waste that may cause environmental pollution, then the treatment is completed.

Experts also suggest that when it comes to the flow direction of battery cascade utilization, current new methods can be actively adopted to track the flow direction, such as setting a qr code or marking on the motor to clarify the flow direction, so as to make recycling targeted.

There are not too many technical difficulties in the treatment of new energy vehicle batteries. Cobalt, nickel and other elements can be treated by chemical means, and the materials with low utilization value in the cathode materials can be physically treated. However, it is difficult for enterprises to profit from battery processing, so there is not a strong desire for battery recycling and processing. Mr Wang hopes that companies should still take some of the profits they make from their products and invest in battery processing.

Enterprises have long been beach layout

It has been five years since new energy vehicles entered the market in 2013, and the current power battery life is generally around five years, which means that the power battery will gradually enter the peak period of recycling and scrapping. According to the prediction of China automotive technology research center, by 2020, China's accumulative scrapped power batteries will reach 120,000 to 200,000 tons. In fact, different from the experts' opinion that enterprises have insufficient power in the recycling and utilization of power batteries, enterprises have a lot to do in the recycling, dismantling and cascade utilization of power batteries. Have power battery relevant enterprise insiders pointed out that many enterprises have already begun to scramble layout.

From entering the market earlier specializing in power battery related business enterprises, such as professional battery recycling and gradient energy storage using company bond pu loop technology, waste battery recycling company beauty, amd group companies such as green, then to such as Beijing new energy, byd new energy car companies, have begun to found in battery recycling, processing power, strive to in power battery recycling a foothold in emerging markets.

However, the vitality of the power battery industry is closely related to the development vitality of the new energy automobile industry. It's worth noting that it's the limited range of battery technology bottlenecks that often give users who are considering new energy vehicles pause. As one of the most important brands in the world's electric vehicles, the fire accident happened in tesla's car battery, which also aroused the attention of all circles on the battery safety of new energy vehicles.

For the power battery technology, there is still a lot of room for innovation in the future development, the need to constantly update the technology, in order to truly meet the needs of the market. "What we need to do is continuously improve the energy density, range and safety of power batteries," wang said.

Experts also expressed the hope that the power battery industry will keep innovating, develop more powerful, safer and more convenient power batteries, and form a healthy and orderly industrial chain of battery recycling and scrapping, so as to facilitate the booming development of new energy vehicles in China.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.