Lithium battery scrapping tide will lead to a new round of pollution

For the power battery market, which is in a period of rapid expansion, what is the current state of its business? In the field of environmental protection, will the power battery that will be eliminated in the future follow the lead of the lead battery?

Lithium battery scrapping tide approaching the norm is not in place will trigger a new round of pollution

Shenzhen - through the glass window, a thumb-sized, cylindrical silver metal body is being extracted from an automated machine imported from Japan. On the subsequent production line, they are neatly gathered into a row. Like the tin square, a row of granular metal bodies, after going through more than 20 processes, they will become a powerful machine heart - become a power battery to drive electric cars to a farther distance. Unknown distant.

This is the scene that was seen on the production line of Shenzhen BAK Power Battery Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Bick”) on December 1, 2017. This battery company with 4,000 employees is due to new The huge demand for the energy automotive industry has rapidly expanded power battery capacity.

Two years ago, only half of BAK's battery products were new energy vehicle power batteries, but now, power batteries have accounted for 90% of the company's products, and it is in Zhengzhou, and there is a larger than the Shenzhen headquarters. The factory is producing new energy vehicle power batteries around the clock.

Behind this is the policy support for new energy vehicles and the government officials' support for the development of new energy vehicles. Public data shows that by 2020, the total sales of new energy vehicles in China will reach 5 million. Among them, production and sales will reach 2 million in 2020 - a full four times more than in 2016.

How many new energy vehicles will have their power batteries.

For the power battery market, which is in a period of rapid expansion, what is the current state of its business? In the field of environmental protection, will the power battery that will be eliminated in the future follow the lead of the lead battery? Wait, in the past month, go into the new energy vehicle power battery kingdom to find out.

"Power Battery" rushes

"With the rapid growth of new energy vehicles, the future will be the best decade for power batteries," said Li Dan, vice president of the BAK Development Planning Center.

Departing from Shenzhen North Railway Station, all the way to the east, through the beautiful coastal salt dam highway, it takes more than an hour to reach the headquarters of BAK. Compared to the bustling Shenzhen urban area, outside the huge factory area, not only is the sparsely populated but also quiet, but entering the workshop is another scene of enthusiasm.

Millions of Japanese imported automation equipment are tirelessly making a thumb-sized, cylindrical power battery (cell), and in a blink of an eye, they appear on the automatic conveyor belt in another row, and from Incoming material mixing to the final "packing into the warehouse", the production of a power battery, a total of incoming material testing, coating, die cutting, core into the shell, injection, welding cap, pumping, self-discharge test Wait for more than 20 process flows.

Among them, the first link of “feeding and stirring” is particularly important. A skilled worker at the Bick workshop said that the environment is clean enough and the incoming materials are qualified, which directly affects the quality of the battery.

Outside the workshop, the staff is nervously packing the batteries that have just been produced, being carried by several forklifts that can only be heard in the noise, and sent to another workshop for assembly, one battery (cell) After assembly, it becomes a battery module. After reassembling several battery modules, it becomes a battery pack.

The assembled battery pack will be shipped to the customer by the company. Just like a heart transplant, these battery packs will be placed in new energy vehicles produced by Jianghuai, Dongfeng, Zotye, Huatai, Haima, Cheetah, and Beiqi Foton – let them run.

Between the machines of the BAK company, the entire power battery industry is flying fast.

According to the data provided by the company, its Shenzhen and Zhengzhou bases can achieve a daily production capacity of 1 million (s) power batteries. By the end of 2017, due to smart manufacturing upgrades, its overall production capacity will reach 8GWh, while in 2016, China's total power battery capacity will be 30.8GWh.

Public data shows that in 2016, the national power battery market share, BAK company ranked sixth, in front of the five are Ningde era, BYD (0.32%), Watmar, Guoxuan Gaoke and Lishen, among them, The sum of the Ningde era (23.3%) and BYD (22.5%) accounted for almost half of the entire market.

However, compared with the future, there is still room for rushing into the total capacity of domestic automotive power batteries. The Institute of High-Industry Research and Development of Lithium and Electricity Research predicts that the output of China's automotive power lithium batteries will reach 141GWh in 2020, which is equivalent to the next three years. Power battery capacity will be nearly five times.

For future growth prospects, BAK Company is giving an average annual compound growth rate of 40%. BYD's two power battery bases in Huizhou and Shenzhen Kengzi will increase its production capacity from 3 GWh in 2016 to 34 GWh by 2020. Just challenged BYD's success and promoted the Ningde era of China's power battery industry “one brother”. In 2020, the total battery capacity will reach 50GWh.

Different routes and competitors

With the old scooter and two-wheel electric vehicles that are not demanding on voltage, lead batteries can often meet different power requirements. The car needs more power, and a new generation of power batteries will appear, including those produced by BAK. In addition to the power battery, it is a lithium-ion battery with high energy density, high voltage, light weight and small volume. This is also the mainstream power battery in the domestic market.

Even so, only in the lithium battery sequence, it also has four subdivisions, not only the "lithium" route has different opinions, but also different, "lithium" electricity, it also has potential threats of potential competitors.

A large amount of data reviewed shows that lithium-ion batteries in automotive power batteries are classified into four types: lithium iron phosphate batteries, ternary material batteries, lithium cobalt oxide batteries, and lithium manganate batteries. Among them, lithium iron phosphate batteries and ternary material batteries are the main products in China.

Due to the early involvement of the lithium battery industry, the company has two technical routes of “lithium iron phosphate” and “ternary materials”. As early as 2006, it produced the first lithium iron phosphate battery in China, but At present, it is a ternary material route.

“Relatively speaking, ternary materials are denser and more flexible than lithium iron phosphate.” Li Dan said, “10 years ago, we judged that ternary materials are the future technical route. Up to now, our The energy density of the ternary material battery has been achieved at 240Wh/kg (Wh/kg)."

According to Li Dan, the energy density of the ternary material lithium battery is obvious, and it can save space for the car. It mainly supplies medium and high-end passenger cars, and lithium iron phosphate is first used on the bus because the bus space is large and the bus is Its market.

According to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, in 2016, the total amount of lithium iron phosphate batteries in China's new energy vehicles accounted for 72.26%, of which 72% were supplied to pure electric buses; the total matching of ternary batteries accounted for 22.91%. 73% of them are supplied to pure electric passenger cars.

But by 2017, this proportion is changing rapidly. Liu Yanlong, secretary general of the China Chemical and Physical Power Industry Association, said that from the total volume in the first half of 2017, the proportion of ternary material batteries has exceeded lithium iron phosphate batteries, and it is expected that the proportion of the two will be equal.

In terms of safety, ternary material batteries are superior to lithium iron phosphate batteries. According to public statistics, since 2011, there have been at least 22 new energy vehicle fire accidents in China, of which up to 20 fires caused by lithium iron phosphate batteries. Only two were caused by the ternary material lithium battery.

Compared with BAK's final choice of ternary material lithium battery route, public information shows that the top two Ningde era and BYD in the power battery industry are still developing "lithium iron phosphate" and "ternary materials". This also means that different technical routes in lithium-powered batteries will continue to exist.

The other side of the uncertainty of lithium-powered batteries lies in the rise of new technologies. "As an emerging industry, the technology update of the lithium-ion battery industry is faster, and the direction of development has certain uncertainty." Ningde era said in its prospectus.

What is new technology? Known as the "father of lithium-ion batteries," Gudinaf announced in 2017 that solid-state batteries have made new breakthroughs, replacing solid-state conductive substances with flammable liquid electrolytes, which will solve many problems.

Gudinave's above statement corresponds to the current state of the current lithium-ion battery. Technically speaking, solid-state batteries can not only conduct more current, but also increase battery capacity, and storage will become easier. Once it turns into a real-world application, it will inevitably subvert the current industry landscape.

Although not yet commercialized, this subversion seems to be not far off. Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan is expected to start selling solid-state battery vehicles in 2020. Coincidentally, Dyson will also introduce solid-state battery vehicles in 2020.

Not only solid-state batteries, but also new battery technologies, hydrogen fuel cells have made substantial progress. On October 25, 2016, the hydrogen fuel cell city bus jointly built by Dongfang Electric Group and a bus company in Chengdu was officially launched. This is also the first city bus of Dongfang Electric Group's first fuel cell power system.

The advantage of a hydrogen fuel cell is that it not only has high energy conversion efficiency, but also produces only water and heat, and is environmentally friendly. At a related forum in 2017, the Minister of Science and Technology Wan Gang said that hydrogen fuel cells currently meet the requirements of vehicle use in terms of life, reliability and performance. China has initially mastered relevant core technologies and basically established independent knowledge. The fuel cell vehicle power system technology platform for property rights.

"Bick has noticed a change in technology." Li Dan said, "We have been observing and following up."

Potential pollution

Compared with traditional batteries such as lead-acid batteries, lithium-ion batteries have better power advantages, and they do not contain heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, which are harmful to humans and the environment, and many people in the industry are also here to talk about it. But this does not mean that it has no potential environmental pollution threat.

The investigation revealed that the pollution threat of lithium-powered batteries lies in the back-end processing after it is scrapped. If it is not properly recycled, it is also very likely to repeat the lead-acid battery over the past year, causing serious pollution to the environment.

According to the obtained data, although lithium-ion batteries do not contain heavy metals such as lead and cadmium, which are widely plagued by rickets, technically, in addition to "lithium", there are still heavy metals such as nickel, cobalt and manganese in the electrolyte. The electrolyte and fluorine-containing organic matter are also contaminated. In addition, after it is scrapped, it still has high pressures ranging from 300 to 1000V. It may be improperly handled during recycling, disassembly and treatment, or there may be various problems such as fire and explosion, heavy metal pollution and organic matter emission.

Taking lithium hexafluorophosphate in the lithium battery electrolyte as an example, it is easily hydrolyzed in the air environment to produce harmful substances such as phosphorus pentafluoride and hydrogen fluoride, which has a strong corrosive effect on human body, animals and plants. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the treatment of the solvent and lithium hexafluorophosphate.

In addition, the industry insiders said that lithium batteries in the process of resource recycling, after thermal pretreatment, pulverization and other physical pretreatment and leaching, extraction and other chemical treatments, can only get nickel, cobalt, manganese remnant In order to further purify, it is necessary to introduce a large amount of ammonia water for treatment, so that harmful ammonia-containing waste liquid is inevitably discharged.

Further, excessive ammonia-containing waste liquid is discharged into the water body, which will lead to eutrophication of water bodies, resulting in a large number of organisms in the water, and nitrates and nitrites formed by oxidation of high-concentration ammonia-nitrogen wastewater pose a great threat to human health. .

More deadly, the peak of power battery scrapping will also arrive in the next few years.

According to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, by 2020, the cumulative scrap of China's electric vehicle power batteries will reach 120,000 to 170,000 tons. Other research institutes predict higher data, and the amount of scrap will exceed 248,000 tons, which is about 20 times that of 2016.

Many industry insiders, including Li Dan, generally believe that China's first batch of power batteries will be retired large-scale before and after 2018. In the next three to four years, power lithium batteries will have a "discarding tide."

“The number is very large, and the power battery and the general daily battery are completely two orders of magnitude concept.” Wang Binggang, head of the national new energy vehicle technology innovation engineering expert group, said that it is different from the relatively environmentally friendly production process. If it is not handled well, it may be a new environmental disaster."

This also poses new challenges for the recovery of lithium-ion batteries.

What is the problem? Yu Haijun, vice president of Guangdong Bangpu Cycle Technology Co., Ltd., the largest in China, is committed to recycling waste batteries. "The mode."

Further, through the dismantling of used new energy vehicles and the recycling of batteries, it is possible to improve the utilization efficiency of batteries, create new profit margins, and reduce the cost of new energy vehicles while avoiding waste batteries contaminating the soil. In the process of resource recycling and recycling, the power battery can once again obtain scarce raw materials such as nickel, cobalt and manganese that are imported from China.

In the face of 2020, the industry generally expects that the metal recycling market of cobalt, nickel, manganese and lithium will exceed the market of tens of billions of yuan, and power battery manufacturers like BAK are also in action.

Taking BAK as an example, it plans to invest a total of 200 million yuan to build a “dismantling and recycling of waste new energy vehicles” project covering an area of ​​30,000 square meters. It is expected that the project will be completed in 2017 and will reach an annual comprehensive treatment of 20,000. The ability to scrap cars and 30,000 tons of power batteries.

Yu Haijun said that the orderly power battery recycling, the precondition is three yards in one, that is, battery code, car VI code and recycling code, these will be entered into the national platform, in order to ensure that the flow of the battery after the end of life can be controlled.

However, at present, China adopts a producer responsibility extension system. Most of the battery producers produce scraps and scraps, which are processed internally without the need to disclose information to the outside under the requirement of “who produces and who is responsible”. In this regard, Yu Haijun suggested that whether China can learn from foreign information disclosure models and disclose information on all aspects of the industry chain to the society, thus promoting industrial development.

Wang Binggang and other respondents also said that domestic policies and technical standards have been formulated, all of which are guiding or recommended guidance documents. They have reference guidance for formal power battery recycling companies, but it is difficult for informal traders. To play a binding role, the state should introduce laws and regulations with sufficient support, binding force and coercive force.

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