The first batch of new energy vehicle batteries are facing "retirement": recycling is not easy
【Ecology Focus】
With the dual drive of policies and the market, my country's new energy vehicle market has experienced explosive growth in the past 10 years.
However, what cannot be ignored is that the first batch of power batteries for new energy vehicles are already aging, and a wave of power batteries "retirement" is about to come.
According to the battery quality assurance capability of a general vehicle manufacturer that decays by 20% in 8 years, my country has experienced a rapid increase in the number of retired power batteries for new energy vehicles from 2017.
It is estimated that the number of decommissioned batteries will reach 9.3 billion watt-hours in 2025, and the number of decommissioned batteries will increase by more than 1 million every year.
This will bring a huge potential market value of cascading utilization.
If the decommissioned batteries are recycled and reused in the way of first cascades and then regenerated, it is estimated that by 2025 their total market size will reach 37.9 billion yuan.
As we all know, batteries contain a variety of heavy metal elements, improper handling will cause environmental hazards.
What will happen when the huge potential market size of used power batteries meets the need for a complete recycling market system?
What are the "blocking points" that urgently need to be opened up?
1. The value and risk of a "retired" power battery
According to the national standards for new energy vehicles, power batteries can often be “retired” with 80% remaining energy.
This makes the power battery still have a greater use value after being "retired" from the vehicle, which not only forms a market with huge potential, but also implies a certain environmental risk.
"Generally speaking, after the end of the service life of the power battery of 5 to 8 years, we encourage the use of'retired' batteries. Although the battery has a reduced range and cannot meet the needs of vehicles, it can be recycled for other energy storage needs. You can continue to'service' for a period of time, and you can also choose to recycle the battery in the future." Jia Jingchun, an associate professor at the School of Chemistry and Environmental Science of Inner Mongolia Normal University, introduced.
Liu Wanmin, associate professor of materials chemistry at Hunan Institute of Engineering, told reporters: "The'retired' power battery can be widely used in power system energy storage, communication base station backup power, low-speed electric vehicles and small distributed home energy storage, wind and solar hybridization, electric forklifts and other fields. Generally, it can be used up to about 60% of the initial capacity of the battery, and the service life can range from several months to several years according to different usage scenarios."
It still has several years of use value, making "first cascade utilization, then regeneration recovery" the preferred recycling scheme for "retired" power batteries.
Echelon utilization refers to the use of "retired" power batteries in other fields.
Recycling refers to the dismantling, crushing, and screening of "retired" batteries, using processes such as leaching hydrometallurgy or pyrometallurgy to extract metal elements such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel from the battery, and use them in the production of secondary batteries.
The reporter learned that power batteries contain metal elements such as lithium, cobalt, manganese, and nickel, and the cost of raw materials accounts for 50% to 70% of the total cost. The lithium and cobalt salts consumed by power batteries have become the most common application areas for lithium and cobalt. The largest proportion of.
With the rapid consumption of primary resources, the recovery of secondary resources should reach a corresponding level.
Since the release of the National Mineral Resources Plan (2016-2020), my country has reserved rare earth metal minerals as a strategic resource. Therefore, the recovery of metal elements in power batteries can not only better develop a circular economy, but also Effectively alleviate my country's long-term dependence on such resources.
However, Jia Jingchun also pointed out that the assembly of lithium batteries contains heavy metals such as lithium, and some batteries use organic electrolytes and organic separators. Unlike the simple recycling methods of traditional lead-acid batteries, the metal recycling process of lithium-ion batteries is relatively complicated. These heavy metals and organic electrolytes will pose a serious threat to the environment.
"After the battery is disassembled, we generally use hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical methods to recycle the metal elements such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and so on. Improper dismantling can lead to safety, environmental and resource problems. From a safety perspective From an environmental perspective, there are heavy metal pollution such as cobalt and nickel, fluorine pollution, and white pollution caused by battery diaphragms. From a resource perspective, there are lithium, nickel, and cobalt. Waste of other high-priced resources." Liu Wanmin said.
2. Battery recycling companies face three major challenges
Despite the huge potential for recycling, there are currently no leading companies in the power battery recycling market, and some chaos has even occurred.
According to media reports, many mainframe manufacturers have established battery recycling businesses.
However, some power batteries did not flow into the formal channels. Instead, they were purchased at high prices and improperly handled by small factories with no qualifications and high pollution, which caused the hidden danger of secondary pollution of the environment.
Why is it so?
"First, at present, new energy vehicle users are not sufficiently aware of power battery recycling; second, the recycling prices of some small workshops are much higher than those of formal recycling companies; third, the qualification requirements for recycling battery companies are relatively high. As a result, the number of formal recycling companies is limited; fourth, the recycling technology is immature and the recycling business model lacks innovation." Liu Wanmin analyzed.
Among them, cascade utilization and recycling are the most difficult.
Although my country has become the country with the best development of new energy vehicles in the world, power batteries are still a new technology.
According to industry insiders, companies still face three major challenges for battery recycling: inconvenient battery disassembly, unknown residual battery health, and low economic benefits.
"Retired" batteries are highly complex. Different power batteries have different internal and external structural designs, module connection methods, and process technologies. The shape alone has a variety of shapes such as square, cylindrical, and soft packs.
This directly led to the failure of large-scale dismantling work in the later stage, which increased the difficulty and labor cost of dismantling.
If the operation is improper, it is more likely to cause various safety issues such as short-circuit causing fire or explosion, leakage of liquid to pollute the surrounding environment, and threat to the health of employees, resulting in casualties and property losses.
At present, there is no data record for the use of some "retired" power batteries, only the original data at the factory, and the use process and current state are unknown.
Before the power battery is used in cascades, each module must be tested, which greatly increases the cost of the enterprise.
At the same time, based on limited data, the prediction of the remaining life is not accurate enough, which will undoubtedly increase the quality risk of cascading products.
The above series of factors make the current economic benefits of recycling power batteries not high.
A staff member of a battery recycling company told reporters that the small workshop abandoned many key links such as testing and discharging in the battery recycling and utilization. At the same time, the operators have not received professional training, so the operating cost is much lower than that of the formal enterprise. Therefore, there is more room for bargaining power and battery purchase cost, which creates vicious competition with formal enterprises.
3. The maintenance and traceability of the power battery "ID card" has not been smooth
In fact, as early as 2016, my country has issued the "Procedure for the Implementation of the Extended Producer Responsibility System", requiring the establishment of a recycling system for electric vehicle power batteries.
The plan pointed out that electric vehicle and power battery manufacturers should be responsible for establishing a waste battery recycling network, using the after-sales service network to recycle waste batteries, collecting statistics and publishing recycling information, and ensuring standardized recycling and safe disposal of waste batteries.
Power battery manufacturers should implement product coding and establish a full life cycle traceability system.
On July 31, 2018, the new energy vehicle national monitoring and power battery recycling and utilization traceability integrated management platform (hereinafter referred to as the "national traceability management platform") was launched. The platform was constructed by the National Engineering Laboratory for Electric Vehicles of Beijing Institute of Technology. The function is to collect information and monitor the entire process of power battery production, sales, use, scrapping, recycling, and utilization, so as to realize the source of the power battery can be checked, whereabouts can be traced, and the node can be controlled.
At present, the national traceability platform has collected more than 5.6 million vehicle information data including new energy passenger cars, buses, special vehicles, etc., with a total of more than 8.9 million packs of various types of batteries and more than 28 billion watt-hours of batteries.
More than 290 new energy vehicle manufacturers and more than 180 battery companies are involved.
The establishment of a full life cycle traceability system means that each vehicle’s battery has its own "ID card."
But why does the battery flow into the small workshop?
Some insiders pointed out that although my country has established a traceability management system, due to the lack of mandatory policies, companies have problems such as serious information lag, incompleteness, and difficulty in tracing data when reporting data.
At the same time, the current policies and regulations have no binding force on how car owners handle batteries, which also gives small workshops an opportunity to purchase power batteries.
"In 2015, my country’s technical policy has clearly stated that a power battery coding system will be established. The 2018 version of the "Interim Measures for Recycling Management" proposes the need to establish a power battery traceability information management system, coding technical standards and related information sharing mechanisms. But reality Among them, there are many types and numbers of companies involved, such as battery manufacturers, battery repair and replacement agencies, battery leasing companies, cascade utilization companies, etc. The battery life cycle is several years, and coding maintenance is difficult." Liu Wanmin said.
Jia Jingchun said: “Professional battery recycling is a large-scale system project. How to carry out recycling requires coordination from all aspects, especially the cooperation between automobile manufacturers, battery manufacturers, and related extended industries. Once a link in the full cycle fails, it will inevitably It causes lag in recycling and other derivative problems."
4. The national standard system for battery recycling still needs to be improved
As of the end of 2020, the National Standardization Administration of my country has issued five national standards for the recycling and utilization of vehicle batteries, basically forming a standard system framework.
In addition, the power battery recycling supervision policy, echelon industry-related standards, and industry supervision system are also being improved.
However, some people in the industry pointed out that most of the current standards are recommended standards, and there are problems such as insufficient binding force and lack of upper-level laws in the implementation process.
"At present, most people are still quite vague about how new energy car owners dispose of'retired' batteries. Some car companies have introduced battery replacement, such as full mileage or'service' time, for battery replacement and recycling. However, new energy vehicles The age of large-area batteries has not yet arrived." Jia Jingchun said, he pointed out that over time, new energy vehicle owners will gradually become more experienced in how to properly handle power batteries.
"At present, we should establish corresponding supervision and legislation to ensure that the used batteries can be returned to the manufacturer or recycling company. At the same time, the supervision of battery production and use must be formed. After leaving the factory, traceability, use tracking and the destination of used batteries are all required A complete set of monitoring mechanisms."
Many industry experts pointed out that in addition to strengthening the implementation of the producer extension system, there are still three aspects of work that need to be improved in the future to accelerate the recycling and utilization of power batteries: one must strengthen publicity to increase consumers’ environmental awareness; Or reward companies that actively participate in battery recycling, while cracking down on non-compliant recycling; the third is to speed up the transformation of enterprises’ intelligent equipment, improve battery recycling efficiency, reduce recycling costs through economies of scale, and improve the bargaining power of enterprises. Normal operations provide effective guarantees, thereby fundamentally solving industry problems with high costs and low profits, and guiding battery recycling and utilization to be further regulated.
As many batteries are on the line, as many batteries need to be “retired”. The recycling of power batteries is an important part of the future development of the new energy vehicle industry, and healthy and standardized development is of vital importance.
This year's government work report mentioned that the construction of a power battery recycling system will be accelerated.
At the national level, my country has accelerated the legislative process of power battery recycling.
In addition, the reporter learned that on March 29, 2021, a national new energy vehicle "retired" power battery evaluation and trading platform (also known as Battery House) was established in Foshan, Guangdong Province.
The platform will aggregate resources from the National Engineering Laboratory for Electric Vehicles, the National Battery Traceability Monitoring and Management Platform, and the New Energy Battery Recycling Professional Committee, and is committed to maximizing battery utilization. It will be based on blockchain technology for new energy vehicles. The company provides a number of services such as big data power battery performance evaluation, offline laboratory testing, and power battery online trading. It is also expected to help solve the difficulty of recycling power battery recycling, limited sales channels, and lack of rapid performance testing technology. And other industry problems.
(Our reporter Li Yulan and Du Bing)