How to solve the problem of lithium iron phosphate recovery under the favorable situation of power battery recycling?

The number of new energy vehicles nationwide reached 6.03 million by the end of June, according to the Ministry of Public Security. Among them, the number of pure electric vehicles is 4.93 million, accounting for 81.68% of the total number of new energy vehicles in China.

With the rapid growth of the new energy vehicle industry, the decommissioned power battery is also increasing year by year, and began to become an urgent problem to be solved in the industry. If we can not find a reasonable business model, it will undoubtedly become a major hidden danger to the development of the electric vehicle industry.

According to the data of China Automotive Technology Research Center, the cumulative decommissioning of power batteries in China is about 200000 tons in 2020 and is expected to be about 780000 tons in 2025. If the current power battery installation of electric vehicles from 50kWh to 70kWh is calculated, then assuming that 600000 electric vehicles are decommissioned, the corresponding decommissioned power batteries will reach 30GWh.

In the future, with the growth of millions of new electric vehicles every year, the decommissioning pressure of power batteries can be imagined.

Although decommissioned batteries have not yet exploded on a large scale, the government is clearly aware of the pressure. "speeding up the construction of power battery recycling system" was included in the 2021 government work report for the first time; the Development Plan of New Energy vehicle Industry (2021-2035) issued by the General Office of the State Council in October last year, we will improve the recycling system of power battery recycling, echelon utilization and recycling, and encourage the joint construction of common recycling channels. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has continuously issued a number of policy documents focusing on the recovery and echelon utilization of decommissioned power batteries.

On July 7, the National Development and Reform Commission and other departments issued the Circular economy Development Plan of the 14th five-year Plan, proposing to strengthen the construction of traceability management platform for power batteries of new energy vehicles, and improve the traceability management system for the recovery and utilization of power batteries of new energy vehicles. We will promote the production of new energy vehicles and the cascade utilization of waste power batteries to build standardized recycling service outlets by means of self-construction, co-construction and authorization. Promote the standardized echelon utilization of power batteries and improve the technical level of residual energy detection, residual value evaluation, reorganization and utilization, safety management and so on.

The frequent occurrence of policies also shows the urgency of power battery decommissioning and recycling.

Prior to this, many people in the industry believed that there were two good places for automobile power batteries to go after retirement: echelon utilization and recycling.

However, after several years of exploration and practice, echelon utilization does not seem to be a good place to go, recycling for some batteries, there is also a practical dilemma of low economy.

01 echelon utilization of large-scale energy storage projects is "warned" of the consumption capacity of small-scale energy storage market

The performance requirements of the power battery of electric vehicles are high, and the battery capacity attenuation of more than 20% needs to be decommissioned, so some experts have proposed that different initial capacity ranges of power batteries can be applied to different application scenarios. For example, the range of 100% to 80% meets the power use of electric vehicles; less than 80% can be used in less demanding areas of energy storage.

New energy vehicle decommissioned power battery is used step by step in the field of energy storage, this view was put forward in the early stage of the development of new energy vehicle industry, and was once regarded as a "good medicine" to solve the problem of decommissioned power battery.

However, with the development of the energy storage industry and the continuous improvement of technical awareness, many people think that batteries for energy storage may actually be more demanding than batteries for electric vehicles.

According to the understanding of Battery China, as early as 2018, a person from a leading battery enterprise in China put forward a different view on echelon utilization: "take the battery to the end of life to charge and discharge repeatedly, and then dissect it. See what changes there are at the physical level. At present, the accumulation of basic data of echelon application battery is far from enough, what will happen at the end of life is actually a question mark, and it will take at least a few years to figure out. "

For example, if a power battery with 4000 cycles decays to 2000 cycles, if it is installed in an energy storage system and only does peak cutting and valley filling, lithium iron phosphate may last for three to four years, while ternary batteries may be less than two years, and it is not cost-effective. And there are greater safety risks.

At that time, many people in the industry judged that power batteries and energy storage batteries for new energy vehicles would be two routes in the future. New energy vehicle power battery emphasizes safety, high energy density and high rate performance, while energy storage battery emphasizes high safety, long cycle life, low cost and so on.

In fact, with the deepening of technology and market understanding, domestic battery companies have also chosen different technical routes to develop energy storage batteries and new energy vehicle power batteries.

For example, Yiwei Lithium Energy and Lin Yang Energy have set up a joint venture company specializing in the energy storage market, and the initial investment of the project has reached 3 billion yuan, and the scale of the energy storage battery has reached 10GWh. while developing energy storage batteries independently, Ningde era has set up joint ventures with a number of industrial chain enterprises to focus on energy storage projects. on the technical route, Ningde era even wants to launch sodium ion batteries to specialize in the energy storage market. Enterprises that traditionally focus on ternary power batteries, such as Funeng Technology and Vision Power, have also arranged lithium iron phosphate battery projects respectively when opening up the energy storage market, and do not consider using decommissioned ternary batteries for echelon utilization in the energy storage market.

However, under the policy encouragement and local demonstration projects, many places have launched a demonstration of the echelon utilization of decommissioned batteries.

According to people familiar with the energy storage industry: "many projects put into operation (echelon utilization) are demonstration projects regardless of cost. The cost of taking the battery apart and then using it in groups is very high." Performance indicators are different, consistency can not be guaranteed, there are certain security risks. "

With the increase of security risks and the low technical feasibility, the government has been aware of this problem.

On June 22, the "New Energy Storage Project Management Specification (interim) (draft for soliciting opinions)" (hereinafter referred to as the "draft for soliciting opinions") was drafted by the National Energy Administration. In principle, large-scale power battery cascade energy storage projects shall not be built before the key breakthroughs in battery consistency management technology and the improvement of power battery performance monitoring and evaluation system. The power battery energy storage projects that have been completed and put into operation should regularly evaluate the battery performance, strengthen monitoring and supervision.

An important place for the echelon utilization of power batteries in the field of large-scale energy storage has been temporarily "frozen". Of course, the freezing may even be permanent.

In small energy storage markets, such as 5G communication base stations, decommissioned batteries are also unpopular. For example, since 2020, China Tower no longer or rarely purchases decommissioned batteries for 5G base stations, but directly uses new products. On the one hand, the specification of the new product is unified, and the application is convenient; second, the price of the new product is low enough, even lower than the cost of re-disassembly, testing and assembly of decommissioned echelon batteries.

Of course, it is not completely unavailable in the small energy storage market, but the scope of this market is still in doubt.

02 recycling road: three yuan is fine, what about iron lithium?

Echelon still needs to be explored, recycling has been done by many enterprises, and achieved good results.

The contents of nickel, cobalt, manganese and other elements in ternary batteries are high. When the decommissioned battery enters the recycling process, the metal materials such as nickel, cobalt and manganese can be extracted and used to process the cathode materials of batteries to achieve effective recycling of resources. It is understood that at present, the recovery rate of nickel, cobalt and manganese can reach more than 99%.

It can be seen that the recycling of ternary batteries can make money, so many recycling enterprises have been actively doing this.

Many enterprises, such as Huayou Cobalt, Green Mei, Bangpu, Ganfeng and so on, have made this cake bigger and recycled the recycled materials to the downstream precursor and ternary cathode materials.

However, lithium iron phosphate is not such a good "way home". "one of the biggest problems with lithium iron phosphate is that its recovery cost is relatively high and its economy is relatively low." An industry insider said.

In fact, there are not many enterprises specializing in the recycling of decommissioned lithium iron phosphate batteries. However, from the application side, the application of lithium iron phosphate battery in the field of electric vehicles is growing rapidly.

Data show that from January to May this year, the installed capacity of power batteries in China accumulated 41.4GWh. Of these, the installed capacity of ternary batteries was 24.2GWH, an increase of 151.7% over the same period last year, and the installed capacity of lithium iron phosphate batteries was 17.1 GWH, an increase of 456.6% over the same period last year.

Driven by economy, the application and proportion of lithium iron phosphate power battery in the field of electric vehicles is expected to continue to grow in the future, and the volume of lithium iron phosphate battery will continue to grow in the future. In the long run, the volume of lithium iron phosphate batteries decommissioned in the future will be very large.

But what will happen to the retirement of lithium iron phosphate batteries in the future? It's heart-wrenching!

It is worth noting that the recycling economy of lithium iron phosphate is gradually increasing, and there is something to look forward to in this market in the future.

Since the second half of 2020, the prices of power battery materials, including lithium carbonate and lithium iron phosphate, have risen sharply. For example, lithium carbonate has risen from less than 40,000 yuan / ton to 90,000 yuan / ton. The sharp rise in the price of lithium carbonate has also made many companies smell the profits of recovering lithium carbonate from decommissioned lithium iron phosphate batteries.

At present, however, the most important thing is, when will the recycling channels and models of decommissioned batteries be available? This is also one of the top priorities.