The power battery recycling outlet has arrived

After a power battery is recycled, what resources can it be disassembled into and what products can it be made into?

At the supporting exhibition of the 2022 World Power Battery Conference held in Yibin, Sichuan from the 21st to the 23rd, a company specializing in the recycling of used batteries truly demonstrated "Where are the batteries going": three rows of eye-catching transparent glass jars, full of colorful Precious metals, synthetic materials and accessories such as iron materials and aluminum shells. According to Long Wei, assistant general manager of the company and deputy director of the product market center, these substances are all from waste batteries, "18 kinds of resources can be recovered from waste batteries, and 11 types of products can be produced, which are used in construction machinery, low-speed vehicles and energy storage field."

The cumulative output of new energy vehicles in China has exceeded 10 million units, and the power battery matching has exceeded 500GWh. While the production of new energy vehicles and power batteries has surged, the issue of rational disposal of power batteries that have been eliminated has been put on the agenda. Carrying out power battery recycling is regarded as an important measure to promote resource recycling, ease resource bottleneck constraints, and promote green and low-carbon development.

"Why do we need to recycle power batteries? Because there are not many resources spread out in our country now, we need to make good use of, recycle and utilize the batteries that have been made." At this conference, the recycling of power batteries to achieve green and low-carbon development points At the forum, Sun Fengchun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said.

The large-scale power battery retirement tide is coming. According to the data of the Advanced Industrial Research Institute (GGII), the theoretical retirement volume of domestic lithium batteries will reach 512,000 tons in 2021, and the lithium battery recycling market will usher in the first small peak. The industry predicts that China's battery recycling scale will reach 125GWh in 2025; around 2050, the supply of recycled resources and original mineral resources will reach a considerable level.

Under the tuyere, more and more companies focus on the field of power battery recycling. Zhang Yuping, deputy general manager of GEM Co., Ltd., believes that power battery recycling is an industry of 100 billion yuan; Yu Hai, vice president of Guangdong Bangpu Cycle Technology Co., Ltd., said that in the long run, power battery recycling companies will gradually become global in the future. ; Karl Bastian, head of BMW Brilliance's sustainable development project, said that BMW Group defines "circular economy" as a strategic focus in the next few years.

"Power battery recycling technology is the re-manufacturing of batteries. How to reassemble various retired batteries is a technical challenge in itself." Xu Kaihua, chairman of GEM Co., Ltd., said in an interview that power batteries must be reassembled from Green design should be carried out at the source, and there should be mandatory entry thresholds and specifications for recycling, so as to form a green development system that is highly orderly, highly standardized, and has a clear division of upstream and downstream responsibilities.

At present, domestic power battery recycling still faces challenges such as the immaturity of the market mechanism, the many companies involved in each link, and the difficulty in guaranteeing information flow. In this regard, Sun Fengchun suggested that the recycling efficiency and design concept of products should be strengthened, the energy attributes of power batteries should be strengthened, and the attributes of high-value electric vehicle components should be weakened; Promote battery swap mode, vehicle power separation, high-efficiency and long-life batteries.

It is understood that the construction of my country's power battery recycling system has been started. According to You Yong, Deputy Director of the Department of Energy Conservation and Comprehensive Utilization of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, since 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has formulated and issued a series of policy requirements such as the "Administrative Measures for the Recycling and Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles", and initially set up the recycling of power batteries. Utilize the management system; build a traceability system, and currently include new energy vehicles, which account for 94% of the national output, into the traceability management; accelerate the construction of the recycling system, and have built more than 10,000 recycling outlets nationwide.

In Sichuan, the recycling of power batteries has made some progress in recent years. Sichuan actively guides leading enterprises to participate in the construction of waste lithium battery recycling and comprehensive utilization projects. The cascade utilization of batteries has been carried out in the fields of communication base stations, edge computing, photovoltaic energy storage, etc., and will enter many fields such as transportation, education, and government affairs in the later stage. Sichuan has also established power battery recycling outlets, expanded recycling channels, and built a whole industry chain for recycling and reproducing retired batteries for cascade utilization.