Great potential of lithium battery cascade utilization power battery drives rapid growth of negative material demand

Lithium batteries are batteries with lithium metal or lithium alloy as anode material and non-aqueous electrolyte solution.

Lithium-ion batteries are secondary batteries for commercial applications

Lithium-ion batteries can be divided into primary batteries and secondary batteries according to their working properties. Primary batteries are non-recyclable batteries; secondary batteries are recharged and discharged many times, such as lead-acid batteries, nickel-cadmium batteries, nickel-hydrogen batteries and lithium-ion batteries, which have been commercialized successively. Lithium-ion batteries are secondary batteries that use two different compounds which can be reversibly intercalated and deintercalated into lithium ions as positive and negative electrodes, respectively.

When the battery is charged, the lithium atoms of the positive electrode are ionized into lithium ions and electrons with positive charges. The positively charged lithium ion starts from the positive electrode, passes through the film and then to the negative electrode, and synthesizes lithium atoms with electrons at the negative electrode. When the battery is discharged, lithium ion ionizes from the surface of the negative material to lithium ion and electrons, in which the positively charged lithium ion starts from the negative electrode, passes through the film and then to the positive electrode, and synthesizes lithium atoms with electrons.

The upstream industry of lithium batteries mainly includes lithium raw materials, cathode materials, negative materials, electrolytes, diaphragms and production equipment.

The downstream applications of lithium-ion batteries are mainly power batteries, 3C batteries and energy storage batteries. Because the current market of energy storage batteries is not yet open, the scale is small.

Lithium Battery Production in China

China is one of the leading producers of lithium-ion batteries. According to the "Lithium Battery Industry Market Demand Forecast and Investment Strategic Planning Analysis Report" published by Prospective Industry Research Institute, China's lithium-ion battery output reached 5.287 billion in 2014, accounting for 71.2% of the global total output, which has been ranked the first in the world for ten consecutive years. In 2016, the annual output of lithium-ion batteries in China reached 7.842 billion, an increase of about three times compared with 2.687 billion in 2010, and an annual compound growth rate of 19.54%.

Industrial Structure Analysis of lithium ion batteries in China

Consumer batteries are the largest application area, accounting for 88.4% in 2012 and 49.84% in 2016. However, it is still the largest application area in China; power batteries, which accounted for 6.94% in 2012, rose to 45.08% in 2016, have great potential for development; energy storage batteries have yet to be developed, accounting for 4.62% in 2012 and 5.08% in 2016, and the growth needs to be improved.

Great potential for cascade utilization of lithium batteries

The proportion of lithium batteries in industrial energy storage batteries has been further increased. Lithium batteries have high specific energy and energy density, low self-discharge rate, no memory effect and no pollution to the environment. Their performances are superior to other types of energy storage batteries.

Step-by-step utilization + disassembly and recycling, a new journey of 10 billion Blue Sea Market

From the demand point of view, the cascade energy storage supply brought by the decommissioning and recycling of power lithium batteries can be completely digested by the market. It is predicted that China will add 79.5 GW of new photovoltaic units in 2020. Considering that renewable energy generation equipped with energy storage system accounts for 5%-20% of the new installed units of new photovoltaic energy generation devices, and the capacity-power ratio is 2-4 times, it can be estimated that the demand of new renewable energy generation equipped with energy storage system can reach 23.85 GW in 2020.

According to the forecast of Prospective Industry Research Institute, the potential scale of new cascade utilization in 2025 will reach 33.6 GWh. The application scenarios such as the demand for economy of peak shaving and valley filling, the explosive growth of distributed photovoltaic installed capacity, and the acceleration of the layout of electric vehicle energy storage and charging stations all contribute to the increasing demand for step-by-step utilization.

Power Battery Drives Rapid Growth of Negative Material Demand

In the future, the growth of consumer electronics demand will be stable at a relatively low level, and the increment of installed units in the energy storage field will be relatively small, while the demand for power batteries will be the main driving force for the high growth of lithium battery industry.

At present, the lithium battery industry is in a period of rapid development. With the support of the government, the capital from all walks of life rushes into the lithium battery industry, and enterprises are also "horse racing enclosure".

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.