CCTV News:The new energy vehicle market is experiencing explosive growth. In 2020, the sales of new energy vehicles reached 1.36 million, with a year-on-year increase of 2.8 times in the first quarter of this year, and the sales volume reached 515,000.
However, as an important part of the new energy automobile industry, the recycling of retired batteries has hidden risks. According to media reports, by 2020, the cumulative decommissioning amount of power batteries in China will be about 200,000 tons, and a large number of them will flow into informal channels such as small workshops, which will bring safety and environmental hazards.
Explosive growth of new energy vehicles "blowout" of retired batteries
Xiaomi announced the plan to build a car, Huawei laid out the vehicle controller, Evergrande said that it had invested more than 10 billion yuan in building a car, and DJI officially announced that it would enter the car track … … Nowadays, the "smart car war" is extremely hot, and the baton of technology companies’ car fever has spread from Internet companies to mobile phone companies, and now it has been sent to drone companies.
In order to solve the problems brought by traditional fuel vehicles, in recent years, countries all over the world have begun to increase research and development and support for new energy vehicles. On April 12th, the State Council Press Office held a press conference to introduce the progress of establishing the policy system of Hainan Free Trade Port. At the meeting, Shen Xiaoming, director of the Standing Committee of Hainan Provincial People’s Congress, said that in order to protect the ecological environment, Hainan will no longer sell traditional fuel vehicles and fully promote clean energy vehicles by 2030.
According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, 1.36 million new energy vehicles were sold in 2020. In the first quarter of this year, the production and sales of new energy vehicles were 533,000 and 515,000 respectively, up 3.2 times and 2.8 times respectively. However, while more and more enterprises are joining the new wave of building cars, the new energy automobile industry is in chaos.
According to the data of China Automotive Technology and Research Center, the cumulative decommissioning amount of power batteries in China will be about 200,000 tons in 2020, and this number will rise to 780,000 tons in 2025.
(New energy vehicle batteries usher in "retirement tide")
In order to ensure battery recycling, in 2018, the Interim Measures for the Management of Recycling Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Environmental Protection stipulated that automobile manufacturers should bear the main responsibility for recycling power batteries, establish power battery recycling channels, and be responsible for recycling waste power batteries generated after the use and scrapping of new energy vehicles.
Although many OEMs have established battery recycling business, a large number of power batteries have not flowed into formal channels. First of all, because retired batteries can be sold for money, many batteries have been bought at high prices by some unqualified car dismantling factories and "small workshops", and most of them do not have professional battery decomposition equipment; Secondly, consumers don’t know about the recycling channel information of retired batteries, and the motivation to turn them over voluntarily is insufficient, resulting in a large number of batteries not entering the recycling channel.
In addition, industry insiders said that in practice, the outstanding problem faced by car companies in battery recycling is the ownership of batteries. After the whole vehicle is sold to the users, the ownership of the battery belongs to the users. After the vehicle has been used for many years, the whole vehicle is scrapped, and the retired battery of the scrapped vehicle belongs to the scrapped vehicle dismantling enterprise. To some extent, this also brings difficulties for the vehicle enterprises to recycle the battery.
Power battery recycling is difficult. Experts: It needs the integration of many forces.
Ms. Jiang from Henan bought a Zotye E200 new energy vehicle with a warranty period of 8 years in 2017. The staff of the 4S shop said that it would cost about 40,000 yuan to replace the battery at their own expense after the warranty period. "Changing the battery is basically the same as changing the car."
The power battery in the new energy vehicle is a consumable, with an average service life of about five years, which is shorter than other parts of the car body. However, it holds the "life gate" of the new energy vehicle. Mileage problem, charging problem, residual value problem and the benefit of battery replacement, all these pain points around new energy vehicles are inseparable from the battery.
Professor Yan Li from the School of Environment, Renmin University of China said that the power battery is different from all other energy storage batteries, and it is a battery pack (group), which requires professional enterprises to disassemble the module, and there are special requirements for the dismantling site, equipment, personnel and safety. Dismantled waste battery cells, including waste liquid and solid waste, must be collected, stored, transported and kept as hazardous waste, and waste liquid or solid waste shall not be discarded, buried or burned.
"If the power battery cannot be effectively recycled, it will cause great environmental harm." Professor Yan Li explained that taking lithium iron phosphate batteries as an example, once the electrolyte leaked from unrecycled lithium batteries, toxic and corrosive electrolyte would flow into the natural environment, which would be harmful to human body, soil and water. The ternary lithium battery is more harmful. The battery material contains heavy metals such as manganese, cobalt and nickel, which will cause pollution to water and soil for 50 years. The carbon and graphite in the negative electrode material will cause dust pollution to the air.
According to Professor Yan Li, the standard for scrapping lithium batteries in new energy vehicles is that the battery capacity is less than 80%. At this time, the remaining capacity is not enough to support the power of new energy vehicles, but recycling at this time often causes great waste. At present, China is formulating and improving the recycling management methods of power batteries, and establishing a cascade utilization and recycling management system of power batteries. "That is to say, scrapped power batteries can be degraded to ICT, household or renewable energy for power generation and energy storage, rather than direct resource recovery."
Since the promotion of new energy vehicles in China is after 2015 and has achieved explosive growth in recent years, it is foreseeable that the scrapping of power batteries will continue to increase in the next few years. Although the country has issued the recycling standards for power batteries and effectively standardized the technology to ensure the safety, environmental protection and high efficiency of the dismantling process of power batteries, "there is no complete recycling industry chain in China, and the battery standards are not unified, the technology is immature, and the cost of battery reverse logistics recycling is high, which directly affects the economic benefits of power battery recycling and the development of recycling industry."
The battery recycling schemes of other automobile countries may have certain reference value. The United States has established a legal system for recycling used batteries from federal, state and local levels, requiring battery manufacturers to be responsible for organizing the recycling of used lead batteries, and using the handling fee paid by consumers and the recycling fee paid by battery enterprises as the source of funds for the disposal of used batteries.
Japan also stipulates that manufacturers are responsible for the recycling of Ni-MH and lithium batteries. After the batteries are recycled, they will be transported back to the battery manufacturers for disposal, and the government will give corresponding subsidies to the manufacturers. Toyota, a representative enterprise, first recycles the used batteries through the dealer network, and then disposes them in different fields by entering the maintenance system, cascade utilization and dismantling, and then disposes them after reaching a certain amount.
Germany launched the Battery Law in 2009, stipulating that battery producers and importers should register with the government, dealers should organize recycling, and users are obliged to hand over used batteries to designated recycling institutions.
Professor Yan Li said that China is at the forefront of all countries in the promotion of new energy vehicles, so the overseas experience that can be followed is limited. The rapid change of power battery technology puts forward higher requirements for its recycling. A sound battery recycling system needs the integration of policies, technologies, subsidies, supervision and other forces.