Description of the Current Situation and the Necessity of Recycling of Power Battery Industry

The "2018 China (Zhengzhou) new energy vehicle industry ecological conference" hosted by electric vehicle resource network is held in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan province, May 11, 2018. [photo/VCG] Zhao Xiaoyong, the managing director of Beijing Saidemei Resource Recycling Research Institute Co., Ltd., delivered a speech on the topic of "the last link of the ecological chain of the new energy vehicle industry -- introduction to the recycling of lithium battery power".

I. The Status of Industry status

In 2017, China's production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 794,000 and 777,000 respectively, and in the first quarter of 2018, the production and sales of new energy vehicles reached 150,000 and 143,000 respectively. It is expected that the domestic production of new energy vehicles will reach 2 million by 2020, accounting for 7-10% of automobile sales. With the production and sales of new energy vehicles soaring, power battery retirement will peak. It is estimated that the amount of scrap will reach 2007 Gwh, about 220,000 tons by 2020.

II The Necessity of Recycling

For power batteries, resource recycling, green environmental protection, safety management and industrial development are all needed, Zhao said.

In 2018, China's primary nickel consumption was 1.23 million tons, up 3.7 percent year-on-year, with stainless steel accounting for 85 percent and batteries 3 percent. Consumption of stainless steel nickel increased by 3.2 per cent, while battery nickel increased by 21 per cent. China consumed 54,000 tons of refined cobalt in 2017, up 13 per cent year-on-year. Cobalt and hard alloy account for 79% and 6% respectively. From 2010 to 2017, the increase of cobalt consumption in China mainly came from the battery industry, and its share increased from 60% in 2010 to 79% in 2017.

Since the beginning of 2016, cobalt price began to rise slowly. In the second half of 2016, cobalt price entered the ascending channel. In 2017, cobalt price continued to reach the high level of 400,000 yuan/ton, and in 2018, it further rose to 600,000-700,000 yuan/ton. There is a big difference between this time around and the 2007 spike in cobalt prices. The rapid rise in cobalt in 2007 was followed by a rapid fall, driven largely by a pre-financial crisis capital binge rather than a really large imbalance between supply and demand. Since 2016, the continuous increase of cobalt price is staged. After experiencing the high shock of 400,000 yuan/ton in 2017, cobalt price rises again at the beginning of 2018.Cobalt prices soared, in addition to capital speculation, supply and demand imbalance is another important reason. In 2017, China's consumption of nickel driven by new energy vehicles was 10,000 tons, which will increase to 38,000 tons by 2020 and 137,000 tons by 2025.In 2017, about 4,300 tons of cobalt were used in China's new energy vehicles, increasing to 14,000 tons by 2020 and 46,000 tons by 2025.Therefore, Zhao Xiaoyong said, do a good job in power battery recycling, in order to ensure that the supply of upstream materials is stable, to avoid price fluctuations too large.

In terms of safety, lithium battery is a high-voltage battery, which is easy to be shocked if disassembled improperly it will burn and explode. Although the lithium battery and lead-acid battery are different, they are not hazardous waste, but solid waste. However, randomly discarded power battery will also cause environmental pollution and serious waste of resources.

III Recycling mode

As the first responsible person for the recovery of power batteries, vehicle enterprises should establish a service network for the recovery of power batteries and publicize it. They can recycle power batteries through after-sales service agencies, battery rental enterprises and other enterprises to form a recycling channel. They can also cooperate with related enterprises to build and share recycling channels to improve the recovery rate. The recovery of power batteries should be initiated from vehicle enterprises, 4S stores and service stations by means of reverse logistics, and the traceability management of used power batteries should be completed

Iv. Introduction of recycling technology

At present, although the concept of cascade utilization has been accepted in China, there is still a gap in terms of how to implement it and combine it with recycling to establish a complete system. At the same time, the research on the sustainable development of the lithium ion battery reproduction industry and the recycling economy model is still in its infancy.

In theory, power batteries can be recycled for cascade utilization, but there are still many difficulties: in order to improve the reliability of battery packs, many enterprises use laser welding technology to connect the batteries in series. Such connection structure makes it difficult to disassemble power batteries and improve the difficulty of cascade utilization. In addition, the specifications of battery monomer, battery module and battery pack are not consistent in the industry, which leads to the failure of efficient automatic disassembly of battery pack and increases the disassembly time and cost. In the operation stage, there is widespread abuse of the vehicle, resulting in uneven performance and state of the battery when it is decommissioned, which causes great difficulties to the sorting of the cascade.

To make good use of the cascade, Zhao Xiaoyong said, it is necessary to collect and analyze the real-time operation data of lithium ion power battery system, and establish a scientific and reliable evaluation system for lithium ion power battery. According to the research and development of the key technologies of the full life cycle of the lithium ion power battery system and material recovery and repair, the system of recycling and reuse of the core components and key materials of the power battery system and the circular economy model are established. At the same time, enterprises should be encouraged to adopt technologies to improve the battery cycle life and increase the added value. In addition, in the design and production of power battery product structure to facilitate the disassembly and assembly of the battery pack, so as to facilitate disassembly and reorganization.

If the conventional hydrometallurgy technology is used for power battery recovery, the overall recovery rate of the battery is low. The low temperature incineration is adopted in the electrolysis process. The membrane and electrolyte produce dioxin in the incineration process, which is easy to cause secondary pollution. The strong acid, strong alkali and a large amount of ammonia water are added in the wet production process. If not properly handled, it may pollute the air, water and soil. For lithium iron phosphate and lithium manganese acid batteries with low content of precious metals, the economic benefits are poor and the business model is unsustainable. Due to the increasing pressure on environmental protection, it is impossible to pass the first - and second-tier cities and environmentally sensitive cities, so new projects cannot be implemented.

According to Zhao Xiaoyong, the first domestic automatic disassembly line for used power batteries independently developed by Saidemei realizes the automatic classification and collection of seven major raw materials, and the disassembly process does not produce secondary pollution. In addition, it also has the domestic leading material repair technology, which can repair and regenerate the waste positive and negative electrode materials and return to the battery production. At the same time, fine disassembly and material repair are combined to make the discarded lithium iron phosphate battery economical.

Finally, Zhao Xiaoyong suggested that the ternary lithium battery should be mainly recycled, and the lithium iron phosphate should be used step by step before the material is recycled. Doing a good job in battery recycling, can complete the whole new energy automobile industry chain closed loop, he said, if the formation of a closed loop, new energy automobile industry chain will be difficult to continue.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.