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Lithium battery scrapping tide approaching the norm is not in place will trigger a new round of pollution
Through the glass window, a thumb-sized, cylindrical silver metal body is being pulled out from an automated machine imported from Japan. On the subsequent production line, they are neatly gathered into a row, just like the tin soldiers. Like a square array, rows of granular metal bodies, after completing more than 20 processes, will become a powerful machine heart - becoming a power battery pack to drive electric vehicles to a farther unknown remote location. .
This is the scene that I saw on the production line of Shenzhen BAK Power Battery Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Bickâ€) on December 1, 2017. This battery company with 4,000 employees is due to The huge demand for the new energy automobile industry has rapidly expanded the 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 day and night.
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, which is 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 ? In the past month, the author has entered 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 10 years for power batteries," said Li Dan, vice president of the BAK Development Planning Center.
Starting from Shenzhen North Railway Station, all the way to the east, through the beautiful coastal salt dam high-speed, it takes more than one hour to reach the headquarters of BAK. Compared to the bustling Shenzhen urban area, outside the huge factory area, not only sparsely populated but also quiet, but into the workshop, it is a scene of enthusiasm.
The millions of dollars of Japanese imported automation equipment are tirelessly producing a thumb-sized, cylindrical power battery (cell). In the blink of an eye, they appear on the automatic conveyor belt in another row, and from “Feeding and stirring†to the final “packing and storageâ€, the production of a power battery requires a total of incoming material testing, coating, die cutting, core filling, liquid injection, welding top cover, pumping, self-discharging. More than 20 process flows such as testing.
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, and 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, allowing them to 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, Watma, Guoxuan Gaoke and Lishen, among them, Ningde era and BYD The sum of the two accounts for almost half of the entire market.
However, compared with the future, there is still room for the total capacity of domestic automotive power battery. A domestic institution predicts that China’s automotive lithium battery production will reach 141GWh in 2020, which is equivalent to the next three years. Nearly 5 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 “one brother†of China's power battery industry. In 2020, the total battery capacity will reach 50GWh.
Different routes and competitors
Older scooters and two-wheeled electric vehicles with low voltage requirements often lead to different requirements for power demand. The car needs more power, and a new generation of power batteries will appear, including the power produced by BAK. The battery 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.
The relevant data shows that the lithium-ion battery in the automotive power battery is divided into four types: the lithium iron phosphate battery, the ternary material battery, the lithium cobalt oxide battery and the lithium manganese oxide battery. It is mainly based on lithium iron phosphate battery and ternary material battery.
Due to the early involvement of the lithium battery industry, the company has two technical routes of “lithium iron phosphate†and “ternary materialsâ€. As early as 2006, it produced the first lithium iron phosphate battery in China, but At present, it is taking the 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. According to industry insiders, 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 equivalent throughout the year. 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.
Bick finally chose the ternary material lithium battery route, while the power battery industry ranked the top two Ningde era and BYD, the choice is still "lithium iron phosphate" and "three yuan materials" at the same time development. 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 data shows 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. 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 their electrolytes. Pollution. In addition, after it is scrapped, it still has high pressures ranging from 300 to 1000V. In the process of recycling, disassembly and treatment, improper operation may result in 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.
According to industry insiders, lithium batteries can only obtain nickel, cobalt and manganese raffinate after physical reprocessing, leaching, extraction and other chemical treatments during the recycling process of resources. In order to further purify, it is necessary to further purify. A large amount of ammonia water is introduced for treatment, and as a result, 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 prediction of the China Automotive Technology and Research Center, by 2020, the cumulative scrap of China's electric vehicle power batteries will reach 120,000-170,000 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,†said Wang Binggang, head of the National New Energy Vehicle Technology Innovation Engineering Expert Group. Unlike the relatively environmentally friendly production process, in the latter stage, “if it is not handled well, it may be a new environmental disaster.â€
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." Through the dismantling of used new energy vehicles and the recycling of batteries, it can 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 responsibleâ€. 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 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. In this regard, the state should introduce laws and regulations with sufficient support, binding force and coercive force.