The domestic power lithium-ion battery recycling industry chain is fully combed
3.1. "Sketch" of domestic power lithium-ion battery recycling: many "sharers"
Due to the potential value of the power lithium-ion battery recycling market and the social necessity and demand for its recycling, many types of companies have taken action in the industrial layout of power lithium-ion battery recycling. Among them, the cascade utilization of retired power lithium-ion batteries can better exert the remaining heat, which has always been a field that related companies have frequently deployed.
After the previous attempts of related companies and the "blue thread" on behalf of companies (such as my country's iron towers, etc.), the commercialization of domestic power lithium-ion battery recycling is gradually moving towards large-scale development. As the largest user unit in the field of cascade utilization of retired batteries, my country's iron tower plans to continue to expand the scale of use of cascaded batteries, and stop purchasing lead-acid batteries, replacing them with cascaded lithium-ion batteries.
At the same time, the types of companies involved in the recycling of power lithium-ion batteries have gradually diversified, which has gradually become a future trend. Companies in the power lithium-ion battery recycling market include most types of companies in the battery production chain, such as battery user units, battery production companies, material companies, energy storage companies, equipment manufacturers, and car companies.
There are 12 important power lithium-ion battery recycling companies in China, and the important technical route is wet method. Among them, Beijing Saidemei takes lithium iron phosphate repair and regeneration as the technical route, Quzhou Huayou, Harbin Battery, and Shandong Weineng produce battery raw materials, and the rest are the production of ternary materials. Taking Jingmen GEM as an example, the recovered power lithium-ion battery undergoes pretreatment steps such as discharge, dismantling, crushing and sorting, and then undergoes leaching with sulfuric acid, and the filter residue is subjected to harmless treatment. The filtrate is neutralized to remove Fe, Al and other impurity ions, and then extracted to obtain Mn, Cu, Zn sulfate, and then electrodeposited to obtain Cu and Zn. The Ni salt and Co salt are separated by chemical precipitation, and after acid leaching, the metal element is obtained by hydrogen reduction finally.
3.2. Mutual benefit and win-win situation: The recycling business cooperation between the battery industry chains is gradually strengthened
The cooperation between the upstream and downstream of the battery industry chain is an inevitable trend in the future, which is determined by the complexity of the recycling process of power lithium-ion batteries.
(1) Responsibility perspective: Whether it is the establishment of the producer responsibility extension system or the inevitable requirement of the internalization of environmental protection costs, car companies located in consumer terminals are obliged to carry out relevant work on the electric vehicles they sell, and they are also the most direct contact with consumers. Links, its advantages lie in channels, but its disadvantages lie in reuse and material manufacturing capabilities. Therefore, the cooperation between car companies and battery companies is an important trend.
(2) Method perspective: low-speed vehicles, household energy storage, etc. are important destinations for cascade utilization, while ternary precursors and cathode preparation are important destinations for their materials after recycling. Therefore, the cooperation between recycling companies and downstream application companies is also an important trend. .
(3) Economic perspective: Economics is the core element to promote the rise of the recycling market. Previously, battery companies usually adopted the means of vertical expansion upstream due to resource constraints and upstream price issues. For this purpose, material manufacturing companies and battery companies are motivated to expand related businesses.
At present, the cooperation between my country's battery industry chain has been demonstrated in many leading companies. From the beginning of the cooperation between power lithium-ion battery companies, materials companies, and related recycling companies, more and more car companies will also participate in the "cooperation alliance" model with the opening of the cascade utilization market.
3.3. "Cost reduction" and "closed loop" are the driving force of the business model
According to the different nature of the leading companies in the existing domestic business models, my country's power lithium-ion battery recycling market has spawned: power lithium-ion battery company recycling business model, lithium battery material company recycling business model, and cascade utilization business model.
(1) The recycling business model of the power lithium-ion battery company is dominated by the power lithium-ion battery production company, and the “recycling” of the card position improves the upstream bargaining power of raw materials and reduces the cost of battery production, which has become the source of this type of business model. Representative domestic companies include CATL, BYD, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, etc. On the other hand, judging from the requirements of the production responsibility extension system, power lithium-ion battery manufacturers often shoulder the responsibility of power lithium-ion battery recycling. At present, with the further expansion of the power lithium-ion battery market potential, major power lithium-ion battery companies have cooperated with material companies and third-party recycling institutions in the form of establishing strategic alliances and equity participation to deploy battery recycling business.
For example, Ningde era cleverly bypassed the layout of the raw material mining industry, and through the layout of the recycling business, it has improved the cost reduction space of its own batteries to a certain extent.
In 2013 and 2015, Ningde Times increased its holdings of Bangpu Recycling, holding 69.02% of the shares of Bangpu, and then in September 2019, it established Ningbo Bangpu Times New Energy Co., Ltd. with a joint venture of 3.6 billion yuan with Bangpu Cycle. It marks the further expansion of CATL's layout in upstream cathode materials.
As early as 2008, Bump Cycle, a subsidiary of CATL, creatively proposed the concept of “upstream and downstream” recycling, and under the guidance of the government, it pioneered the recycling system of used batteries in my country. At present, Bangpu has set up 15 recycling outlets nationwide. These outlets directly connect with the sales and after-sales service network of car companies, which can partially solve the shortcomings of recycling outlets of car companies. In terms of resource recovery technology, Bangpu conducts fully automated pretreatments such as crushing, pyrolysis, crushing and repeated screening and magnetic separation of waste lithium-ion batteries to obtain concentrates containing nickel and cobalt, and then undergoes a series of chemical impurity removal and other processes. A ternary material precursor (nickel-hydrogen-manganese hydroxide) is generated in a specific shape. The ternary precursor and lithium carbonate are used as reactants, and are sintered in an oxygen atmosphere according to a set temperature program to obtain a nickel cobalt lithium manganate cathode material.
(2) The recycling business model of lithium battery material companies is dominated by lithium battery materials companies. By recycling key metal resources in waste batteries, an industrial closed loop and cost reduction space are formed, which has become the source of power for the development of this type of business model. Among them, ternary precursor companies have deployed in the field of lithium battery recycling, Guanghua Technology, GEM, Hunan Bangpu, Huayou Cobalt, Ganzhou Highpower (Xiamen Tungsten Industry Holdings) were selected as the first batch of "New Energy Vehicle Waste Power Battery Comprehensive Utilization Industry" Specification Conditions". In addition, Zhongwei Co., Ltd., Ganfeng Lithium Industry, Guangdong Jiana, Jinchi Energy, etc. also have the ability to recover lithium batteries.
1) When Huayou Cobalt increases its upstream resource layout and purchases mineral resources, it also deploys its downstream recycling industry, which can potentially broaden its raw material supply channels in the field of cobalt resources and ensure stable resource supply and cost stability.
"Huayou Cobalt Industry" has a wholly-owned subsidiary, "Zhejiang Huayou Circulation Technology Co., Ltd.". In 2018, Huayou Recycling was recommended by Zhejiang Provincial Economic and Information Commission as the leading unit for the pilot work of recycling and utilization of power battery for new energy vehicles in the province. The special recycling production line put into operation by Huayou Cycle in 2018 has achieved an annual processing capacity of 64,680 tons of retired power batteries, and can comprehensively recover 5,783 tons of cobalt (metal content), 9,432 tons of nickel (metal content), 2,050 tons of lithium (metal content) and Manganese, copper foil, aluminum foil and other valuable elements.
2) By integrating resources and strengthening inter-industry cooperation, GEM has accumulated technical advantages and scale advantages in the power lithium-ion battery regeneration industry.
GEM conducts its business layout according to the new energy full life cycle value chain of "battery recycling - raw material recycling - material recycling - battery pack recycling - new energy vehicle service". The company has cooperated with well-known domestic and foreign companies such as BAIC, BYD, and Samsung to open a large-scale social responsibility cycle system led by automobile factories, participated by battery factories, and undertaken by recycling companies, and realized the implementation of the full life cycle value chain model. At the same time, the company has successively signed vehicle battery recycling and disposal agreements with more than 160 car companies and battery companies.
(3) The representative company of the cascade utilization business model is my country Tower. As a third-party company, its main business is not battery and battery recycling business, but its main business type has a good fit with the cascade utilization of power lithium-ion battery recycling. For example, my country's iron tower is not only a consumer of retired batteries, but also a retired battery. Battery recyclers, based on the relevant experience of my country's iron towers, have summed up three ways to use lithium-ion batteries in a cascade, namely reassembly, direct combination of battery modules, and use of the whole package.
The key to the commercial recycling model of my country's iron towers is to cooperate with car companies and power lithium-ion battery companies to jointly build a shared recycling network. At present, my country Tower has signed strategic cooperation agreements with FAW, Dongfeng, Jianghuai, BYD, Weilai and many other new energy vehicle companies. These cooperation agreements mainly serve the recycling of retired batteries of new energy vehicles. At the same time, my country Tower is also actively conducting strategic cooperation with power lithium-ion battery companies. In January 2018, my country Tower and Guoxuan Hi-Tech signed a strategic cooperation agreement for the cascade recycling of power lithium-ion batteries. Guoxuan Hi-Tech and my country Tower have become strategic partners. Work together to promote the application of cascade power lithium-ion batteries in the field of communication base stations.
my country's iron towers have huge potential for cascade utilization of retired power lithium-ion batteries as energy storage batteries for base stations and have a broad market. As early as 2015, my country's iron tower companies have successively carried out the test of replacing lead-acid batteries with cascaded batteries in more than 3,000 base stations in 12 provinces and cities, which fully verified the safety and technical economy of cascaded utilization. In 2018, my country's iron tower company has stopped purchasing lead-acid batteries, but purchased retired power lithium-ion batteries from 20 companies including Shenzhen BYD. As of 2018, my country's iron towers have used a total of about 1.5GWh of cascade recycling batteries in about 120,000 base stations across the country, replacing about 45,000 tons of lead-acid batteries, becoming a leading company in the national cascade utilization industry.
With the advent of the 5G era, the construction of 5G base stations in my country's iron towers will usher in a rapid rise in the next few years. If cascaded batteries are applied to 5G base stations, the tower's demand for cascaded batteries will rise further. Based on the use of 12.5kWh cascade utilization batteries for each base station, we have integrated 5G spectrum and corresponding coverage enhancement methods. There are 4.45 million 4G base stations), with a total of about 5-6 million. The total demand for batteries corresponding to the cascade utilization will reach 62.5GWh-75GWh, which can basically be effectively digested by the future decommissioned batteries.
3.4. Building a cost reduction model: looking at cost reduction logic from another perspective
3.4.1. Calculation of cost reduction by dismantling and recycling: the cost reduction logic of lithium battery material companies
The dismantling and recycling of waste power lithium-ion battery resources can alleviate resource shortages, thereby reducing the exploitation of related resources and the dependence on market materials. At the same time, material companies can also bring certain economic benefits through direct sales of recycled metals. To this end, we build an economic evaluation model, which is expressed in the form of a corresponding mathematical model for the reduction of the input cost in the process of power lithium-ion battery recycling and the cost reduction of recycled materials for subsequent power lithium-ion battery production, which is convenient for quantitative analysis. .
According to the cost analysis method, the income model of the waste power lithium-ion battery is established. The income (E) can be expressed by the following formula: where Esell means that all the valuable metals recovered by dismantling are sold directly (only nickel, cobalt, manganese, and lithium are considered here), CRecycle represents the relevant costs to be considered in the process of dismantling and recycling valuable metals.
According to the above table, the cost of recycling 1 ton of discarded ternary batteries is 21,900 yuan, while the cost of recycling 1 ton of discarded lithium iron phosphate batteries is 21,400 yuan. We will subsequently measure the recycling benefits of Ni, Co, Mn, and Li recovered from the dismantling of ternary batteries. Since the products recovered from the dismantling and recycling of lithium iron phosphate batteries per ton are iron phosphate, lithium carbonate, and aluminum materials, the economic benefits of direct dismantling and recycling are not large, and priority is given to cascade utilization, or the disposal cost is internalized through administrative means and subsidies. , the economy will appear.
After determining the cost of dismantling and recycling CRecycle, we need to determine Esell, that is, the income from direct sales of valuable metals recovered from dismantling.
3.4.2. Calculation of cost reduction of "peak and valley arbitrage" of cascade utilization
Considering that a large number of lithium iron phosphate batteries will be retired in the future, the dismantling and recycling of simple lithium iron phosphate batteries does not have much economic benefits. Therefore, cascade utilization will become the best choice for decommissioned lithium iron phosphate batteries. The battery capacity of retired lithium iron phosphate batteries is often still 70%-80%, and in some occasions, it still has good energy storage benefits. Therefore, we designed a model of an energy storage power station based on retired lithium iron phosphate batteries, using "peak-valley arbitrage" to gain benefits.
