Why are lithium-ion batteries rarely recycled

A new energy car with a guideline price of 300,000 yuan may have a battery cost of 100,000 yuan or more. "In general, power cells with less than 80 percent capacity can no longer be used in new energy vehicles." Shanghai Jiaotong university automotive engineering research institute vice President Yin Chengliang said in an interview.

"A lot of [new energy vehicles] companies are promising consumers battery life and quality assurance of up to 10 years, but when you take into account the environment and other comprehensive conditions, the average life of power batteries is 5 years." Do not want to disclose the name of the industry said.

Electric vehicle power battery recycling situation

As the situation of new energy vehicles is getting better, some people also ask: five years or a few years later, these cannot continue to be used in new energy vehicles on the power of the battery, what should be done?

China automotive technology research center predicts that by 2020, China's electric vehicle power battery scrap volume will reach 120,000 to 170,000 tons.

Cascade utilization, looks very beautiful

These batteries, which cannot be used by electric vehicles, are not completely worthless. In theory, they can also be used for energy storage or related power supply base stations, street lamps, low-speed electric vehicles, and recycling system. This is also the industry's general term for power battery reuses or cascade utilization.

According to foreign media reports, general motors issued a statement at an automobile battery seminar last week, saying that it will soon disclose the development plan of electric vehicle battery reuse technology. Gm had previously proposed electric car batteries for the grid. This and the idea of personage inside domestic course of study at present basic and consistent.

"The cascade utilization of power batteries, on the one hand, is certainly for energy conservation considerations. On the other hand, if cascade utilization is popularized, it will undoubtedly greatly reduce the cost of new energy vehicles. "Yin Chengliang said.

The energy conservation and new energy automobile industry development plan (2012-2020), issued in July 2012, clearly proposes to formulate management measures for the recycling and utilization of power batteries, establish a cascade utilization and recycling management system, guide production enterprises to strengthen the recycling and utilization of waste batteries, and encourage the development of specialized battery recycling and utilization enterprises.

After that, "including the Beijing and Zhejiang companies affiliated to state grid, they are committed to the research of residual energy of power batteries, and invested in the research project of cascade utilization of power batteries, but the progress is relatively slow." OFweek industry research center new energy analyst sun Dongdong previously told reporters.

In fact, "the idea of using power cells to store energy on a large scale can only be imagined." North China some new energy company's technical personnel pointed out.

According to him, though the density of energy storage battery to the monomer battery requires less power battery is so high, but a storage battery energy storage projects of larger scale, usually to hundred kw even megawatts, and a new energy car battery capacity on average is about 30 KWH, if you want to be used for power battery energy storage, there is no doubt that need a lot of battery pack, which will make the whole piece of facing the consistency of storage battery and management difficulties, which will affect the whole piece of energy storage battery.

What's more, "from the perspective of the current industrial situation, due to the different battery routes, battery specifications and battery evaluation requirements of different automobile companies in China, there are too many battery models, which leads to excessive dispersion of output and brings more difficulties to the 'post-market', i.e. cascade utilization." "Sun Dongdong said.

Therefore, in the view of the above technical personnel, if the cascade utilization, I am afraid it is only a small range of applications. For example, energy storage programs in homes. However, "while it is relatively easy to meet the technical requirements for a small range of household energy storage, the reality is that there is not much demand in China right now for this segment of demand. It's relatively easy to implement in the United States or other countries because they live in single-family homes and have energy storage facilities that are easy to install.

Policy to encourage sad business values related

Although there are various problems, the recycling and reuse of power batteries has become an urgent task. According to relevant plans, the cumulative production and sales of new energy vehicles in China will reach 5 million by 2020. According to the prediction of China automotive technology research center, by 2020, the cumulative scrap volume of electric vehicle power batteries in China will reach 120,000 to 170,000 tons.

"A 20-gram cell phone battery can pollute the water of three standard swimming pools. If abandoned on the land, it can pollute a square kilometer of land for about 50 years. Imagine if a few tons of electric car power cells were discarded in the natural environment. Large quantities of heavy metals and chemicals entering the nature will cause greater pollution to the environment. Beijing institute of technology professor Wu Feng has publicly expressed.

Perhaps because of this, on December 30, 2014, the ministry of finance and other four ministries and commissions jointly issued the notice (draft for soliciting opinions) on the promotion and application of financial support policies for new energy vehicles from 2016 to 2020 (hereinafter referred to as the "notice"), which made it clear that automobile manufacturers are responsible for the recycling and utilization of power batteries and are responsible for the recycling of power batteries.

In order to encourage manufacturers to recycle power batteries, many local governments are also actively exploring. Shanghai has issued a policy that said the government will subsidize car companies to recycle power batteries by 1,000 yuan per set. Shenzhen has set up a system for the utilization and recycling of power batteries: every car manufacturer will spend 600 yuan, and the government will spend 300 yuan to recycle power batteries, and initially establish a battery recycling mechanism.

"We are currently in discussions with our suppliers about future battery recycling, but we have no specific details to disclose." Wang yu (not his real name), a manufacturer of new-energy vehicles in Anhui province, said, "since sales of new-energy vehicles were just starting last year, more attention was paid to front-end sales, while battery manufacturers are now busy expanding capacity and feel less concerned about recycling." The person who did not want to be named said.

What's more, in his opinion, the technology is not in place and the whole commercial chain of the reuse of new energy batteries has not been improved, which makes it difficult for the whole industry to form a closed loop. "Take an extreme example. You see, lead-acid batteries, car repair places can be recycled, garbage sorting places can also be recycled, why? That's because it's so easy to make commercial value out of lead-acid recycling -- take a screwdriver, pry open the battery, dump the acid, take out the most valuable lead and resell it for money. "Said the person.

But why can't lithium batteries be recycled? In his opinion, the recycling process of lithium battery is too complicated, and it is difficult to directly recover the positive electrode material, negative electrode material, electrolyte, diaphragm and other high value-added intermediate products from the waste lithium battery for commercialization. In addition, lithium battery materials and formulas from different manufacturers are different, which makes recycling more difficult.

It's not easy to recycle, it's harder to reuse. For example, even for home energy storage batteries, secondary development should be carried out according to the requirements of energy storage projects, which requires that the appearance, installation, power interface, signal interface, various protocols and voltage levels of the battery group must be unified. After all this is done, even if there are "buyers" who can accept recycled products, how can we ensure that recycled products have more advantages in cost and price than new products?