[nickel-cobalt-lithium summit] recovery and comprehensive utilization of lithium batteries for new energy vehicles

[live] focus: global economy, Nickel, Cobalt, Lithium Price, Battery Technology and Battery Recycling

"[live broadcast] under the background of carbon neutralization, the development prospect of stainless steel and nickel industry 2021 Review and Prospect of the Global Nickel Market

"[live broadcast] Review and Prospect of Cobalt and Lithium Market; Analysis on Recycling of carbon Neutralization Battery current situation and trend of Power Battery Recycling

SMM5 March 21: at the SMM2021 (6th) China International Nickel-Cobalt-Lithium Summit Forum, Qiu Kailun, technical director of Shenzhen Hengchuang Ruineng Environmental Protection Technology Co., Ltd., introduced the comprehensive recycling of lithium batteries for new energy vehicles.

Lithium battery recycling market

The global market for lithium battery recycling is about $165.3 million in 2019 and is expected to grow to $18.1 billion by 2030. (APAC) in the Asia-Pacific region accounts for the highest share of the lithium battery recycling market, currently accounting for about 70%, and the overall growth rate is estimated to be about 18.3% by 2030. There are many recycling companies, including China, Vietnam, India and the Philippines. Due to the popularity and explosive growth of electric vehicles, mainland China alone will produce 500000 tons of waste lithium batteries by 2020, and the world will reach 2 million tons per year by 2030. China recycled nearly 67000 tons of waste lithium batteries in 2018, accounting for 69% of the global market, followed by South Korea, with about 18000 tons recycled in 2018. At present, the recovery rate of the European Union and the United States is less than 5%. Although the European Union and the United States recycling companies have a sound treatment process, it is difficult to achieve the profit goal, or it is the lack of more cost-effective ways of recovery and removal.

Due to the substantial expansion of the application field, the global lithium battery (LithiumBattery) market is in a period of growth and has grown rapidly in the past five years. Among them, the use of cathode materials is also increasing, cathode materials determine the energy density, cycle life and safety of lithium batteries, accounting for more than 30% of the cost of lithium batteries. The picture shows the market growth trend of various cathode materials. due to the different properties, advantages and disadvantages of various materials, their application fields and development prospects are also different. From the perspective of application structure, the market of cathode materials for lithium batteries can be subdivided into the market of cathode materials for small lithium batteries and the market for cathode materials for power lithium batteries. The cathode materials for small lithium batteries mainly include lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO2), ternary materials (NMC and NCA) and lithium manganate (LiMn2O4), while the cathode materials for power lithium batteries are mainly lithium manganate, lithium iron phosphate (LiFePO4) and ternary materials.

Development trend of cathode materials:

Due to the sharp rise and fall in the price of cobalt in the past five years, the price fluctuation is as high as 300%. Lithium cobalt oxide, which contains 60% cobalt by mass, is subject to a huge cost test. therefore, lithium battery manufacturers are actively looking for alternative materials and begin to develop low-cobalt and cobalt-free cathode materials as solutions.

Especially in the electric vehicle market, the demand for nickel-containing batteries with high energy density will gradually increase. According to the research report of NickelInstitute, about 39% of lithium batteries in the global market use nickel in 2016, and the proportion is expected to rise to about 58% by 2025. Especially for automotive battery applications such as electric vehicles, the demand for high-energy-density nickel-containing batteries will increase. From the point of view of the recovery of (Recycle), it is also necessary to pre-layout, from the current mainstream of recovery of cobalt, also consider the recovery and treatment of nickel.

At present, the technological development of cathode materials will be based on the research and development of high energy density NCM, and the proportion of cobalt will be replaced by "nickel". Nickel has the characteristics of stability at high temperature and the higher the proportion, the greater the energy density, so it forms the mainstream trend of new technology of high-nickel and high-gram capacitance materials, especially in the technical application of power vehicle batteries. Due to policy and market promotion in mainland China, BYD, Tianjin Lishen and other companies have invested in the development of NCM811 power lithium battery products to produce high energy density lithium batteries that exceed the existing ternary material NCM523 gram capacity 166mAh/g, helping to improve battery life. What NCM811 means is: in the cathode materials of ternary lithium batteries, the proportion of the three main materials: nickel (Ni), cobalt (Co) and manganese (Mn) is 8 (Co) 1, respectively. It can be seen that the proportion of nickel is much higher than that of cobalt, which represents a higher battery energy density. Compared with the ternary material NCM523 battery of the same weight, NCM811 is expected to provide more power and higher life. And the demand for reducing battery weight and reducing battery space can also be realized.

High-nickel battery technology development production equipment and technology are very different from the past, still attracting investment in the global battery industry, in addition to mainland Chinese battery companies Ningde era (CATL), Bic, Tianjin Lishen, BYD, Japan has Panasonic (Panasonic), while South Korean battery companies have LG Chemical, Samsung SDI, SKI and other battery companies have put into research and development, mass production, and most of them are cylindrical development. According to South Korean media ETNews reports, recently South Korean company Samsung SDI even proposed to invest more than 90% of the high nickel proportion of battery technology development, it can be seen that this wave of high nickel positive battery technology research and development competition will continue to develop.

In the lithium battery recycling industry, China has the largest and most experienced front-line recycling plant. According to BCG analysis, the profit from recycling ternary cathode materials for lithium batteries in large-scale recycling plants in China is 15% of the cost of raw materials. Take NMC622 as an example, the cost of NMC622 is calculated at US $25 / kWh, of which 30% comes from acquisition and transportation, 20% for labor, 20% for materials and energy costs, the gross profit is 30%, and the pre-tax profit (EBIT) is 15%, which is equivalent to US $4 / kWh,. Plus 15% depreciation, sales and administrative expenses

The recovery and treatment technology of waste lithium battery is to separate and extract the useful components of waste lithium battery according to their individual properties, and we can know the internal composition and proportion of lithium battery after disassembly and classification. According to the summary of recovery technology by Bernardes et al and Xu et al, the whole treatment technology can be roughly divided into physical pretreatment process, valuable metal extraction process and chemical advanced treatment process. In the pre-treatment, the mechanical separation method is most commonly used in industrial recovery, which is mechanically crushed directly or after peeling off the shell, and the lighter substances such as plastics and diaphragms are separated by air separation or flotation, and then separated by magnetic separation and sieving. complete the collection of metal materials in lithium batteries in order to enter the subsequent hydrometallurgical or pyrometallurgical process; The valuable metals are dissolved and leached from the cathode materials of waste lithium batteries by pre-treatment, crushing and screening, and then separated, extracted and recovered.

European Battery Union (EBA) in response to the request of the European Commission in 2018 to develop green batteries in line with EU standards, funded by the European research project Horizo battery 2020, combined with European national research institutions, lithium battery-related industry implementation of the EU large-scale research project BAT-TERY2030+, put forward a blueprint for sustainable battery development. Its main goal is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and implementation strategies include: self-repairable material design (Self-Healing), improving R & D efficiency through intelligent big data development (BIG, MAP), more environmentally friendly manufacturing processes and recycling and remanufacturing methods.

Among them, the battery recyclability and manufacturability have been planned for three years, focusing on the development of sustainable and easy-to-disassemble integrated battery design, battery module sorting and reuse, battery data collection and analysis, automatic battery disassembly technology, etc. For six years of medium-range planning and layout, aiming at the separation and recovery technology of lithium battery active materials, the goal is to regenerate active materials of battery-level specifications, and to develop predictable model tools to evaluate the secondary utilization of recycled powders; long-term planning and layout for ten years, establish a complete direct recovery and reuse system

The whole project includes data collection, reduced-order reuse and module sorting, single cell sorting and material sorting module. The recovery of materials can be divided into three categories, including the use of pyrolysis / wet treatment mode to obtain, recycled precursor materials, remanufactured cathode materials, and then back to the application of lithium battery industry chain.

In order to reduce energy waste and promote the development of circular economy industry, most electric vehicle OEM plants and energy storage system plants are still actively involved in the development of echelon utilization of junk batteries. For example, VW car factory recently announced plans for secondary utilization of tipped batteries in charging stations. In addition, Nissan, Toyota and other car factories have plans for power battery recycling recently. Energy storage system factories that undertake echelon battery utilization include: Eaton, ChinaTower, BAKPower, Fortum, etc.

The success factors of echelon utilization include: it is necessary to develop a large-scale and standardized program to reduce the cost of cell module rematching, and there is an urgent need to establish the design, integration and certification program of new cycle module. and try to use the whole battery module to rematch, reduce the disassembly cost of the cell module and the time-consuming matching of the battery module; In the future, echelon utilization will also lead to the integration of software and hardware equipment, the hardware includes hybrid renewable energy systems, such as solar energy and battery energy storage, and software services include engineering and technical services, software upgrades, charging station services, and rental services. The development of battery evaluation system is also one of the successful factors of echelon utilization. Through a unique business model, battery evaluation is carried out according to the remaining capacity of the battery. In addition, some companies have proposed the echelon utilization of regional restrictions, so as to reduce the cost of battery transportation.

At present, the global car factory, lithium battery factory, battery material factory and independent recycling plant on behalf of the main manufacturers. Under the active promotion of the policy, China has established the only lithium battery closed cycle industry chain in the world. For example, BYD (BYD) has connected its own lithium battery closed cycle in series across electric vehicle factories, battery factories, and even battery cathode factories.

Greenmei (GEM), Huayu Cobalt (HuayouCobalt) and Ganfeng Lithium (GanfengLithium) are the main suppliers of lithium battery materials, which have the largest market share in the world and lead the recycling of lithium battery materials at the same time.

Apart from China, manufacturers that dominate the lithium battery recycling system are gradually emerging all over the world, including car factory VW, cathode material manufacturer Umicore, independent recycler SungEel, etc. Nissan has also established a joint venture with Sumitomo Corporation to establish a new business model of 4REnergy to reuse (Reuse), remanufacture (Refabricate), resell (Re-sell), and recycle (Recycle). At the same time, it also brings many startups such as Li-Cycle, BatteryResourcers, Deusenfeld and RedwoodMaterials to develop lithium battery pretreatment and valuable metal recovery technologies.

At present, there are several major battery recycling plants and their recycling technology. Hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy are suitable for any type of battery, so they can handle a large number of batteries at one time. The former uses a large number of organic and strong acid and alkali solvents, the discharge of waste liquid is easy to cause secondary pollution, only the recovery of batteries containing cobalt or nickel has economic benefits, including ShenzhenGreen, Re-triev, Recupyl, Greenmei; the latter produces toxic gas emissions through high temperature heat treatment, so it requires expensive air cleaning and other equipment, on behalf of manufacturers such as JX Rishi Metal Co., Ltd., Umicore. In recent years, (DOE) of the Department of Energy of the United States has established a lithium battery recycling center (ReCellCenter) advocates direct recycling (DirectRecycling), is a novel technology, but it is still in the stage of development.

The technology of direct reuse of cathode materials accounts for a large proportion of the four spindles of ReCell. The focus of this technology is divided into two parts: one is the positive separation procedure, including flotation (FrothFlotation), magnetic separation, positive electrode upgrade and reengineering (CathodeUpcycling), adhesive removal, etc. The other part is positive lithium regeneration, which also includes four programs: chemical lithium supplement (ChemicalRelithiation), electrochemical lithium supplement (ElectrochemicalRelithiation), ion thermal lithium supplement (IonothermalRelithiation), hydrothermal lithium supplement (HydrothermalRelithiation).