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ENGLISHThe potential of China's battery recycling market is enormous, but the current power battery re
发布时间：2023-08-11 21:54:19 来源： 德国森泉蓄电池
The potential of China's battery recycling market is enormous, but the current power battery recycling industry is still in its early stages of development.
On June 9th, at the 2023 World Power Battery Conference in Yibin, Sichuan, a company showcased recycled new energy vehicle power batteries (photographed by Hu Xu)
On July 19th, at the press conference on the development of industry and information technology in the first half of 2023 held by the State Administration for Industry and Information Technology, Tao Qing, spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and director of the Operation Monitoring and Coordination Bureau, stated that from January to May 2023, China had recycled 115000 tons of waste power batteries, exceeding the annual total of 102000 tons in 2022.
On July 3rd, with a pure electric sedan driving off the production line of GAC Aian, China's total production of new energy vehicles exceeded 20 million. As of 2022, China's production and sales of new energy vehicles have remained the world's top for 8 consecutive years. With the explosive growth of the new energy vehicle industry, the "retirement wave" of power batteries is coming one after another.
The recycling and utilization of retired batteries has received much attention. Minsheng Securities recently released a research report stating that by 2030, the size of China's power battery recycling market is expected to reach 140.6 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 9 times compared to the actual market size in 2022.
The market potential is enormous, but the power battery recycling industry is still in its early stages of development, "Cao Guoqing, Deputy Secretary General of the Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance for Resource Compulsory Recycling Industry (ATCRR), told Outlook Oriental Weekly, On the one hand, the number of retired power batteries is rapidly increasing; on the other hand, the recycling and utilization system for retired batteries is not yet perfect. The recycling and processing capacity of compliant enterprises is limited, and a portion of retired batteries are flowing to small enterprises, forming a regional market cluster for individual recycling. The dismantling operation is not standardized, bringing various safety hazards
Lithium price volatility
Lithium ion batteries are one of the most widely used battery types in the current electric vehicle market. Lithium, nickel, and cobalt are important metals in lithium battery cathode materials, which directly determine the energy density, safety, and cost of the battery. Therefore, lithium is known as the "white oil" of the era of automotive electrification.
As the main raw material for new energy vehicle power batteries, nickel cobalt lithium has rapidly increased in demand with the rapid development of the electric vehicle industry, and has attracted high attention from countries around the world to nickel cobalt lithium resources. "Chen Xuesen, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, told Outlook Oriental Weekly.
The significant fluctuations in the prices of metal materials for new energy batteries have had a negative impact on the development of both upstream and downstream industries. For example, the significant decline in lithium prices at the beginning of this year has also caused difficulties for domestic upstream high-cost mine development and raw material production enterprises, and even some upstream enterprises have suffered losses, affecting investment enthusiasm. Chen Xuesen pointed out that the external dependence of nickel, cobalt, and lithium minerals accounts for 93%, 98%, and 63% of China's consumption, respectively, The supply of raw materials is highly dependent on imports. At the same time, the distribution of overseas resources is too concentrated, with cobalt resources being highly concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and nickel and lithium resources heavily dependent on Indonesia and South America. In addition, China currently faces the problem of imperfect recycling systems and standards in ensuring the safety and stability of the nickel cobalt lithium industry chain supply chain.
Chen Xuesen analyzed that due to the long development and construction cycle of mineral resources, mine construction is far behind the speed of upstream and downstream smelting, processing, and battery industry construction, especially the super rapid development of power batteries and electric vehicle industries in various regions, leading to serious mismatches in the development speed of upstream and downstream industries, and a phased shortage of supply and demand. In addition, a leading lithium resource enterprise in a foreign country has adopted a small batch spot bidding auction trading method for lithium products, which has intensified concerns among market parties about upstream raw material supply and contributed to the rise in lithium raw material prices. In this context, the lithium market price in 2022 showed a sustained and irrational surge trend. In mid November, the price of battery grade lithium carbonate once exceeded a historical high of 600000 yuan/ton, doubling from the beginning of the year. However, the market trading volume significantly shrank, and downstream purchasing willingness significantly decreased. With the gradual release of new production capacity and increased supply, lithium prices have gradually declined. As of June 30, 2023, the price of battery grade lithium carbonate has dropped to around 300000 yuan/ton.
In response to the sharp short-term price fluctuations of nickel, cobalt, and lithium since 2022, the government, industry, enterprises, and associations have worked together to ensure supply and stable prices. Firstly, continue to improve the level of domestic resource supply and stabilize the basic domestic supply situation. According to statistics, in 2022, the total output of lithium salts produced by utilizing domestic salt lake lithium resources, lithium mica, spodumene, and recycling lithium containing waste reached 284000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, an increase of 77.5% compared to 2021, and the external dependence of lithium resources decreased by nearly 10 percentage points. Secondly, Chinese enterprises have achieved good results in obtaining nickel cobalt lithium resources and developing them through "going global". In response to the short-term sharp fluctuations in prices, domestic backbone enterprises have flexibly adjusted their business strategies, strengthened risk management, and fundamentally suppressed excessive speculation and speculation through the rational use of futures tools. At the same time, the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association has spoken out through various channels, advocating for ensuring supply and stable prices, and has also achieved good results.
Urban Mines
To achieve long-term stabilization of raw material price fluctuations, in addition to increasing upstream development and promoting the industrialization of sodium ion batteries, recycling waste power batteries as a supplement to raw material resources is playing an increasingly important role.
Established in 2016, Batrui Technology Co., Ltd. possesses the technology of physically dismantling retired power batteries, Company President Fu Qiang told Outlook Oriental Weekly: Retired power batteries contain abundant lithium, nickel, and cobalt resources, which have good cascade utilization value and recycling value of renewable resources. Cascade utilization refers to the process of recycling, screening, and reuse of waste batteries in other fields, with a typical application scenario being energy storage. Cascade utilization is of strategic significance for breaking through the resource constraints of energy metals and ensuring domestic resource supply. Recycled materials help reduce the life cycle of power battery products The periodic carbon emissions are in line with the development direction of the industrial chain ESG (measuring the sustainability of enterprise development from the perspectives of environment, society, and governance). At present, industry giants such as Tesla, Ningde Times, and BYD are increasingly valuing the utilization of renewable resources, and recycled metals may be added to the industry certification
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, as of the end of 2022, the cumulative promotion volume of new energy vehicles in China was 15.9592 million, with a total ownership of 13.1 million vehicles. Based on this calculation, as of the end of 2022, the cumulative scrapping volume of new energy vehicles in China is 1.3812 million. Calculated based on the average installed capacity of 48.2KWh of batteries per vehicle, the estimated cumulative retired capacity is 6657GWh, equivalent to 443800 tons. It is expected that throughout 2023, the total number of retired new energy vehicles in China will reach 275000, and the number of retired power batteries will reach 136GWh, with a discount of 121000 tons. Among them, lithium iron phosphate batteries account for 52.9%, ternary batteries account for 43.4%, and other types account for 3.7%.
"Why is it called 'urban mine'? Because waste power batteries are rich ores that can provide high-purity raw materials, and their grade (the content of useful ingredients in ore per unit volume or weight) is higher than that of raw ores." Sun Zhi, a researcher at the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the head of the key metal recycling direction of the environmental resource technology research group, said that the key metals recovered from waste power batteries can significantly improve the resource supply of production enterprises, It is expected that by 2025, China can achieve the following goals: recycling lithium can meet 24% of demand (calculated at a recovery rate of 80%), recycling cobalt can meet 31.2% of demand (calculated at a recovery rate of 95%), and recycling nickel can meet 16.8% (calculated at a recovery rate of 90%).
In early July, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xin Guobin, stated that in recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has strongly supported the recycling of power batteries, and has successively issued policy documents such as the "Interim Measures for the Management of the Recycling and Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries". National standards such as power battery product specifications, dimensions, coding rules, disassembly rules, and residual energy testing have been released. Promote the national unified coding of power batteries, establish a national traceability management platform and a full lifecycle traceability monitoring mechanism, and guide automobile production enterprises, cascade utilization, and battery production enterprises to establish over 10000 recycling service outlets for waste power batteries nationwide, covering 31 provinces and 327 prefecture level cities.
Sun Zhi believes that although a power battery recycling and utilization network has been initially established nationwide, at the top-level design level, industry standards are not perfect enough and industry data interoperability is poor; At the level of recycling technology, there are few revolutionary new technologies, and a single process is difficult to meet the increasingly complex needs of dismantling and recycling waste batteries; At the level of environmental impact, there is a lack of comprehensive process planning and systematic risk assessment of the entire industry chain.
Idle production capacity
In May 2023, in the battery disassembly workshop of Sichuan Changhong Runtian Energy Technology Co., Ltd., the production line was silent. Several hundred boxes of retired power batteries lie quietly in the disassembly workshop, and there is also a backlog of some waste batteries in the warehouse, while neither the battery disassembly line nor the assembly production line has started.
This battery dismantling line operates and can handle tens of thousands of retired power batteries annually, "said Feng Hui, General Manager of Changhong Runtian. In the second half of 2022, the company's total battery recycling and processing capacity reached over 3000 tons. However, since 2023, the production line has entered a state of "insufficient food", with less than 50% of enterprises operating in the first quarter and a total recovery of less than 300 tons.
Changhong Runtian was established in 2018 and is a subsidiary of Sichuan Changhong Electronics Holding Group specializing in the recycling and cascade utilization of power lithium batteries in the energy sector. It is one of the 84 enterprises on the white list of waste power battery comprehensive utilization industries announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Established in 2017, Zhejiang Huayou Recycling Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Huayou Recycling") is also a whitelisted enterprise. Huayou Cycle is committed to building an integrated lithium battery cycle business system, and has established cooperative relationships with vehicle manufacturing enterprises such as Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, GAC, SAIC, Changan, NIO, etc. General Manager Bao Wei told Outlook Oriental Weekly: The participants in the recycling market include battery companies, automotive companies, material companies, and professional third-party recycling companies. According to enterprise inspection data at the end of 2022, there were as many as 40784 domestic recycling companies, but only 84 companies were on the whitelist of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The expansion of power battery production capacity in various regions is fast, and if the market size growth rate cannot keep up with the expansion of production capacity, overcapacity can easily lead to malicious competition in the industry, which may fall into a non benign cycle at the cost of sacrificing the environment Ring
In the disassembly workshop of Huayou Recycling Quzhou Base, the flexible battery pack automatic disassembly line is transporting battery modules removed from the battery pack
The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also stated that there are relatively many comprehensive utilization and recycling enterprises in China, but there is a significant difference in technological level. The advanced enterprises have a nickel cobalt resource recycling rate of about 95%, and a lithium recycling rate of over 90%. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage advanced and eliminate outdated enterprises, and improve the overall resource recycling rate.
"The recovery and utilization of power batteries in China still needs to overcome key technologies. First, efficient and safe cascade utilization technology; second, high recovery and environment-friendly recycling technology." Sun Fengchun, academician of the CAE Member and director of the National Engineering Laboratory of Electric Vehicles, said.
Fu Qiang believes that the low level of intelligence is also a bottleneck that limits the improvement of the recycling and utilization rate of power batteries. According to the "Specifications and Dimensions of Power Batteries for Electric Vehicles" implemented by the country in 2018, there are 145 specifications of power batteries. A considerable portion of power batteries were designed without considering the need for later recycling, resulting in low compatibility. This is the reason for the difficulty of digital management in the recycling field, and the low level of digitization further affects the upgrading of recycling technology.
The New Road of 'Mining'
We are increasing our upstream and downstream strategic cooperation to address the issue of insufficient food for major manufacturers in the power battery industry, actively binding customers from battery factories and vehicle factories to ensure stable incoming materials, "said Fu Qiang.
According to the 2022 annual reports of various companies, Ningde Times is actively carrying out battery recycling business with important partners such as SAIC, FAW, GCL Group, and Mercedes Benz. Tianqi Shares and JD Technology launched strategic cooperation to jointly build a "Internet plus+recycling" platform for waste batteries and a national recycling system for waste lithium batteries.
Bao Wei introduced that Huayou Cobalt Industry is exploring a new path of "mining" - upgrading its high-end product development capabilities and connecting the entire lithium battery material industry chain; By leveraging the "coupling" function and engaging in diversified cooperation with mainstream domestic and foreign automotive brands such as BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, FAW, Changan, as well as leading battery companies, we aim to achieve a closed-loop path for the recycling and utilization of retired power batteries through low-cost operations, high safety monitoring, low material costs, and high battery residual value, providing customers with global, safe, harmless, and sustainable solutions for waste batteries.
On May 31st, in order to build a green closed-loop full industry chain ecosystem for power batteries and assist in the construction of waste free cities, Yibin City, Sichuan announced the first nationwide introduction of digital hazardous waste management standards. It is reported that the "Intelligent Management System for Hazardous Waste in the Automotive Aftermarket" adopts Internet of Things technology to provide digital industry solutions for the storage, collection, transportation, and disposal of more than ten types of hazardous waste generated in the automotive aftermarket, including lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries, waste oil, and waste metal. It realizes the governance and control of hazardous waste from the source, as well as the full traceability, visualization, and information supervision.
For the recycling industry, the next step is to improve the overall level of intelligence. "Fu Qiang said that large-scale application of automation equipment and robots for sorting, dismantling, and processing processes is necessary to enhance the digital level of monitoring, management, and other processes.
Chen Xuesen stated that in the next step, the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association will actively promote the development of national, industry, and group standards for related products, expand the import channels of renewable raw materials such as nickel cobalt lithium in power batteries, leverage China's technological advantages in power battery recycling, and alleviate the pressure on mineral resources, especially imported minerals.
On June 9th, at the 2023 World Power Battery Conference in Yibin, Sichuan, a company showcased recycled new energy vehicle power batteries (photographed by Hu Xu)
On July 19th, at the press conference on the development of industry and information technology in the first half of 2023 held by the State Administration for Industry and Information Technology, Tao Qing, spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and director of the Operation Monitoring and Coordination Bureau, stated that from January to May 2023, China had recycled 115000 tons of waste power batteries, exceeding the annual total of 102000 tons in 2022.
On July 3rd, with a pure electric sedan driving off the production line of GAC Aian, China's total production of new energy vehicles exceeded 20 million. As of 2022, China's production and sales of new energy vehicles have remained the world's top for 8 consecutive years. With the explosive growth of the new energy vehicle industry, the "retirement wave" of power batteries is coming one after another.
The recycling and utilization of retired batteries has received much attention. Minsheng Securities recently released a research report stating that by 2030, the size of China's power battery recycling market is expected to reach 140.6 billion yuan, an increase of nearly 9 times compared to the actual market size in 2022.
The market potential is enormous, but the power battery recycling industry is still in its early stages of development, "Cao Guoqing, Deputy Secretary General of the Technology Innovation Strategic Alliance for Resource Compulsory Recycling Industry (ATCRR), told Outlook Oriental Weekly, On the one hand, the number of retired power batteries is rapidly increasing; on the other hand, the recycling and utilization system for retired batteries is not yet perfect. The recycling and processing capacity of compliant enterprises is limited, and a portion of retired batteries are flowing to small enterprises, forming a regional market cluster for individual recycling. The dismantling operation is not standardized, bringing various safety hazards
Lithium price volatility
Lithium ion batteries are one of the most widely used battery types in the current electric vehicle market. Lithium, nickel, and cobalt are important metals in lithium battery cathode materials, which directly determine the energy density, safety, and cost of the battery. Therefore, lithium is known as the "white oil" of the era of automotive electrification.
As the main raw material for new energy vehicle power batteries, nickel cobalt lithium has rapidly increased in demand with the rapid development of the electric vehicle industry, and has attracted high attention from countries around the world to nickel cobalt lithium resources. "Chen Xuesen, member of the Standing Committee of the Party Committee and Vice President of the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, told Outlook Oriental Weekly.
The significant fluctuations in the prices of metal materials for new energy batteries have had a negative impact on the development of both upstream and downstream industries. For example, the significant decline in lithium prices at the beginning of this year has also caused difficulties for domestic upstream high-cost mine development and raw material production enterprises, and even some upstream enterprises have suffered losses, affecting investment enthusiasm. Chen Xuesen pointed out that the external dependence of nickel, cobalt, and lithium minerals accounts for 93%, 98%, and 63% of China's consumption, respectively, The supply of raw materials is highly dependent on imports. At the same time, the distribution of overseas resources is too concentrated, with cobalt resources being highly concentrated in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and nickel and lithium resources heavily dependent on Indonesia and South America. In addition, China currently faces the problem of imperfect recycling systems and standards in ensuring the safety and stability of the nickel cobalt lithium industry chain supply chain.
Chen Xuesen analyzed that due to the long development and construction cycle of mineral resources, mine construction is far behind the speed of upstream and downstream smelting, processing, and battery industry construction, especially the super rapid development of power batteries and electric vehicle industries in various regions, leading to serious mismatches in the development speed of upstream and downstream industries, and a phased shortage of supply and demand. In addition, a leading lithium resource enterprise in a foreign country has adopted a small batch spot bidding auction trading method for lithium products, which has intensified concerns among market parties about upstream raw material supply and contributed to the rise in lithium raw material prices. In this context, the lithium market price in 2022 showed a sustained and irrational surge trend. In mid November, the price of battery grade lithium carbonate once exceeded a historical high of 600000 yuan/ton, doubling from the beginning of the year. However, the market trading volume significantly shrank, and downstream purchasing willingness significantly decreased. With the gradual release of new production capacity and increased supply, lithium prices have gradually declined. As of June 30, 2023, the price of battery grade lithium carbonate has dropped to around 300000 yuan/ton.
In response to the sharp short-term price fluctuations of nickel, cobalt, and lithium since 2022, the government, industry, enterprises, and associations have worked together to ensure supply and stable prices. Firstly, continue to improve the level of domestic resource supply and stabilize the basic domestic supply situation. According to statistics, in 2022, the total output of lithium salts produced by utilizing domestic salt lake lithium resources, lithium mica, spodumene, and recycling lithium containing waste reached 284000 tons of lithium carbonate equivalent, an increase of 77.5% compared to 2021, and the external dependence of lithium resources decreased by nearly 10 percentage points. Secondly, Chinese enterprises have achieved good results in obtaining nickel cobalt lithium resources and developing them through "going global". In response to the short-term sharp fluctuations in prices, domestic backbone enterprises have flexibly adjusted their business strategies, strengthened risk management, and fundamentally suppressed excessive speculation and speculation through the rational use of futures tools. At the same time, the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association has spoken out through various channels, advocating for ensuring supply and stable prices, and has also achieved good results.
Urban Mines
To achieve long-term stabilization of raw material price fluctuations, in addition to increasing upstream development and promoting the industrialization of sodium ion batteries, recycling waste power batteries as a supplement to raw material resources is playing an increasingly important role.
Established in 2016, Batrui Technology Co., Ltd. possesses the technology of physically dismantling retired power batteries, Company President Fu Qiang told Outlook Oriental Weekly: Retired power batteries contain abundant lithium, nickel, and cobalt resources, which have good cascade utilization value and recycling value of renewable resources. Cascade utilization refers to the process of recycling, screening, and reuse of waste batteries in other fields, with a typical application scenario being energy storage. Cascade utilization is of strategic significance for breaking through the resource constraints of energy metals and ensuring domestic resource supply. Recycled materials help reduce the life cycle of power battery products The periodic carbon emissions are in line with the development direction of the industrial chain ESG (measuring the sustainability of enterprise development from the perspectives of environment, society, and governance). At present, industry giants such as Tesla, Ningde Times, and BYD are increasingly valuing the utilization of renewable resources, and recycled metals may be added to the industry certification
According to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, as of the end of 2022, the cumulative promotion volume of new energy vehicles in China was 15.9592 million, with a total ownership of 13.1 million vehicles. Based on this calculation, as of the end of 2022, the cumulative scrapping volume of new energy vehicles in China is 1.3812 million. Calculated based on the average installed capacity of 48.2KWh of batteries per vehicle, the estimated cumulative retired capacity is 6657GWh, equivalent to 443800 tons. It is expected that throughout 2023, the total number of retired new energy vehicles in China will reach 275000, and the number of retired power batteries will reach 136GWh, with a discount of 121000 tons. Among them, lithium iron phosphate batteries account for 52.9%, ternary batteries account for 43.4%, and other types account for 3.7%.
"Why is it called 'urban mine'? Because waste power batteries are rich ores that can provide high-purity raw materials, and their grade (the content of useful ingredients in ore per unit volume or weight) is higher than that of raw ores." Sun Zhi, a researcher at the Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the head of the key metal recycling direction of the environmental resource technology research group, said that the key metals recovered from waste power batteries can significantly improve the resource supply of production enterprises, It is expected that by 2025, China can achieve the following goals: recycling lithium can meet 24% of demand (calculated at a recovery rate of 80%), recycling cobalt can meet 31.2% of demand (calculated at a recovery rate of 95%), and recycling nickel can meet 16.8% (calculated at a recovery rate of 90%).
In early July, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xin Guobin, stated that in recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has strongly supported the recycling of power batteries, and has successively issued policy documents such as the "Interim Measures for the Management of the Recycling and Utilization of New Energy Vehicle Power Batteries". National standards such as power battery product specifications, dimensions, coding rules, disassembly rules, and residual energy testing have been released. Promote the national unified coding of power batteries, establish a national traceability management platform and a full lifecycle traceability monitoring mechanism, and guide automobile production enterprises, cascade utilization, and battery production enterprises to establish over 10000 recycling service outlets for waste power batteries nationwide, covering 31 provinces and 327 prefecture level cities.
Sun Zhi believes that although a power battery recycling and utilization network has been initially established nationwide, at the top-level design level, industry standards are not perfect enough and industry data interoperability is poor; At the level of recycling technology, there are few revolutionary new technologies, and a single process is difficult to meet the increasingly complex needs of dismantling and recycling waste batteries; At the level of environmental impact, there is a lack of comprehensive process planning and systematic risk assessment of the entire industry chain.
Idle production capacity
In May 2023, in the battery disassembly workshop of Sichuan Changhong Runtian Energy Technology Co., Ltd., the production line was silent. Several hundred boxes of retired power batteries lie quietly in the disassembly workshop, and there is also a backlog of some waste batteries in the warehouse, while neither the battery disassembly line nor the assembly production line has started.
This battery dismantling line operates and can handle tens of thousands of retired power batteries annually, "said Feng Hui, General Manager of Changhong Runtian. In the second half of 2022, the company's total battery recycling and processing capacity reached over 3000 tons. However, since 2023, the production line has entered a state of "insufficient food", with less than 50% of enterprises operating in the first quarter and a total recovery of less than 300 tons.
Changhong Runtian was established in 2018 and is a subsidiary of Sichuan Changhong Electronics Holding Group specializing in the recycling and cascade utilization of power lithium batteries in the energy sector. It is one of the 84 enterprises on the white list of waste power battery comprehensive utilization industries announced by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Established in 2017, Zhejiang Huayou Recycling Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Huayou Recycling") is also a whitelisted enterprise. Huayou Cycle is committed to building an integrated lithium battery cycle business system, and has established cooperative relationships with vehicle manufacturing enterprises such as Toyota, Volkswagen, BMW, GAC, SAIC, Changan, NIO, etc. General Manager Bao Wei told Outlook Oriental Weekly: The participants in the recycling market include battery companies, automotive companies, material companies, and professional third-party recycling companies. According to enterprise inspection data at the end of 2022, there were as many as 40784 domestic recycling companies, but only 84 companies were on the whitelist of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. The expansion of power battery production capacity in various regions is fast, and if the market size growth rate cannot keep up with the expansion of production capacity, overcapacity can easily lead to malicious competition in the industry, which may fall into a non benign cycle at the cost of sacrificing the environment Ring
In the disassembly workshop of Huayou Recycling Quzhou Base, the flexible battery pack automatic disassembly line is transporting battery modules removed from the battery pack
The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also stated that there are relatively many comprehensive utilization and recycling enterprises in China, but there is a significant difference in technological level. The advanced enterprises have a nickel cobalt resource recycling rate of about 95%, and a lithium recycling rate of over 90%. Therefore, it is necessary to encourage advanced and eliminate outdated enterprises, and improve the overall resource recycling rate.
"The recovery and utilization of power batteries in China still needs to overcome key technologies. First, efficient and safe cascade utilization technology; second, high recovery and environment-friendly recycling technology." Sun Fengchun, academician of the CAE Member and director of the National Engineering Laboratory of Electric Vehicles, said.
Fu Qiang believes that the low level of intelligence is also a bottleneck that limits the improvement of the recycling and utilization rate of power batteries. According to the "Specifications and Dimensions of Power Batteries for Electric Vehicles" implemented by the country in 2018, there are 145 specifications of power batteries. A considerable portion of power batteries were designed without considering the need for later recycling, resulting in low compatibility. This is the reason for the difficulty of digital management in the recycling field, and the low level of digitization further affects the upgrading of recycling technology.
The New Road of 'Mining'
We are increasing our upstream and downstream strategic cooperation to address the issue of insufficient food for major manufacturers in the power battery industry, actively binding customers from battery factories and vehicle factories to ensure stable incoming materials, "said Fu Qiang.
According to the 2022 annual reports of various companies, Ningde Times is actively carrying out battery recycling business with important partners such as SAIC, FAW, GCL Group, and Mercedes Benz. Tianqi Shares and JD Technology launched strategic cooperation to jointly build a "Internet plus+recycling" platform for waste batteries and a national recycling system for waste lithium batteries.
Bao Wei introduced that Huayou Cobalt Industry is exploring a new path of "mining" - upgrading its high-end product development capabilities and connecting the entire lithium battery material industry chain; By leveraging the "coupling" function and engaging in diversified cooperation with mainstream domestic and foreign automotive brands such as BMW, Volkswagen, Toyota, FAW, Changan, as well as leading battery companies, we aim to achieve a closed-loop path for the recycling and utilization of retired power batteries through low-cost operations, high safety monitoring, low material costs, and high battery residual value, providing customers with global, safe, harmless, and sustainable solutions for waste batteries.
On May 31st, in order to build a green closed-loop full industry chain ecosystem for power batteries and assist in the construction of waste free cities, Yibin City, Sichuan announced the first nationwide introduction of digital hazardous waste management standards. It is reported that the "Intelligent Management System for Hazardous Waste in the Automotive Aftermarket" adopts Internet of Things technology to provide digital industry solutions for the storage, collection, transportation, and disposal of more than ten types of hazardous waste generated in the automotive aftermarket, including lead-acid batteries, lithium batteries, waste oil, and waste metal. It realizes the governance and control of hazardous waste from the source, as well as the full traceability, visualization, and information supervision.
For the recycling industry, the next step is to improve the overall level of intelligence. "Fu Qiang said that large-scale application of automation equipment and robots for sorting, dismantling, and processing processes is necessary to enhance the digital level of monitoring, management, and other processes.
Chen Xuesen stated that in the next step, the China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association will actively promote the development of national, industry, and group standards for related products, expand the import channels of renewable raw materials such as nickel cobalt lithium in power batteries, leverage China's technological advantages in power battery recycling, and alleviate the pressure on mineral resources, especially imported minerals.
上一篇：What kind of danger and opportunity will the "retirement trend" of power batteries bring