With the implementation of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries are expected to become the next "petroleum" resource, but few people pay attention to discarded lithium batteries. How much do you know about the recycling of lithium batteries?

In this article, the professional lithium battery manufacturer Winshinepower will introduce the relevant information on lithium battery recycling and help you get a preliminary understanding of the lithium battery recycling industry. Interested partners may wish to take a few minutes to take a look with me.

Ordinary investors are not suitable for investing in lithium battery recycling.

The first reason is the low gross profit margin.

For example, GEM’s gross profit margin is 17%, its net profit is 5%, Tianqi’s lithium battery recycling sector gross profit margin is 32%, its net profit is estimated to be 5%, and the gross profit margin of Transcend Technology’s electronic waste disposal is 30% and net profit is estimated to be 24%.

The second reason is that the profit model is general.

Take the initiative to recycle from individual vendors in the market, the one with the highest price will get it, and the recycling price has no advantage. The increase in market value requires new factories to solve, the asset-liability ratio cannot be reduced, and the ROE is low.

Reason 3 The role of lithium battery recycling as the main industry is weak.

The market entities formulated by the policy do not comply with the "Interim Provisions on the Traceability Management of Recycling and Utilization of Power Batteries for New Energy Vehicles", which clearly stipulates that vehicle enterprises should bear the main responsibility for the recycling of power lithium batteries. In the future, with the advent of the scrapping of new energy vehicles, car factories may be at the core of battery recycling. As a third-party recycling company, it needs to actively and deeply form a good bond with car companies and battery factories to gain channel advantages.

Understanding lithium battery recycling

1. Battery recycling methods are divided into direct recycling and cascade utilization

The full life cycle value chain of a power battery refers to "power battery recycling - nickel cobalt lithium battery raw material reconstruction - battery material reconstruction - power battery reconstruction".

Recycling and processing of lithium batteries in the whole life cycle value chain of new energy refer to the centralized recycling of scrapped lithium batteries, recycling the batteries through physical, chemical, and other recycling processes, or recycling valuable metal elements in batteries such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel. Wait for it to be extracted.

Taking the power battery as an example, when the existing capacity of the power lithium battery only accounts for 80% of the original capacity, the electrochemical performance of the power lithium battery will be difficult to meet the normal power demand of electric vehicles, and it can be recycled.

The recycled and processed waste power lithium batteries and their materials can finally be reused in the field of lithium batteries or powder metallurgy. Under normal circumstances, the service life of a powerful lithium battery is about 5 years, and the life of a new energy vehicle is more than 10 years. Therefore, in theory, a new energy vehicle needs to be replaced 1-2 times during the service life.

Echelon utilization refers to decommissioning and testing the batteries whose performance has dropped below 80% of the initial performance on electric vehicles, and then screening and recombining the batteries with better performance for secondary utilization in some occasions where the use conditions are relatively mild. Retired batteries under cascade utilization are mainly used in energy storage, telecommunication base stations, and low-speed electric vehicles.

Among them, lithium iron phosphate batteries have longer cycle life and higher safety and are suitable for cascade utilization. For example, in August 2019, the park cascade utilization energy storage power station project jointly built by BAK Battery and China Southern Integrated Energy was launched. The main batteries used in the energy storage system of this energy storage power station are retired ternary batteries and lithium iron phosphate batteries.

2. The significance of the full life cycle value chain of lithium batteries is environmental protection and economy

The raw materials produced by battery recycling mainly include ① positive and negative materials, ② electrolyte, ③ electrolyte solvent, ④ diaphragm, and ⑤ binder.

(1) Environmental protection. Raw materials will cause certain damage to the environment. For example, heavy metals such as cobalt used as cathode materials will change the pH of the environment, and electrolytes and their solvents may cause fluorine pollution and organic pollution.

(2) Economy. Used by battery manufacturers and their upstream and downstream companies in the industry chain to save resources. Car manufacturers such as Weilai and power battery manufacturers such as Ningde Times have begun to deploy new energy vehicle battery swap businesses.

In addition, the promotion of the battery replacement mode will help car manufacturers or power battery manufacturers as the main body of recycling to lock the source of used batteries in advance, realize batch recycling, and improve recycling efficiency.

3. Lithium battery recycling is an important supplementary channel for the supply of energy metal resources

The vigorous development of the new energy vehicle market has led to a sharp increase in the demand for power battery materials. Driven by market demand, the imbalance between supply and demand of upstream nickel, cobalt, lithium, and other raw materials has led to a surge in raw material prices, which has caused great pressure on downstream cathode material companies and power battery companies to purchase raw materials. The supply side of nickel, cobalt, and lithium is relatively tight. Therefore, the recycling of waste power lithium batteries will realize the reuse of the above-mentioned metal materials, and manufacturers can resist the negative impact of price fluctuations of some battery materials from the supply side and create higher recycling income.

The metal content ratio of various types of power batteries At present, the supply of various core metal materials for lithium batteries is concentrated overseas. In the long run, it may cause uncertainty in the security of the domestic supply chain. In the future, battery recycling may contribute to a considerable increase in metal materials, especially since It is still the main supplier of cathode materials and batteries in China and an important new energy vehicle consumer market in China. It has a natural advantage of distance between urban mines in the field of battery recycling.

[Lithium Resources] The supply is still dominated by overseas and overseas has the pricing power. From the perspective of the distribution of lithium resources in my country, according to SMM, more than 80% of my country's lithium resources exist in salt lakes, mainly in Qinghai, Tibet, and other provinces (regions), while ore lithium resources are mainly concentrated in Sichuan, Jiangxi, Hunan, Xinjiang and other 4 provinces, the ore lithium resources in the above 4 provinces account for more than 98% of the national ore lithium resources

[Cobalt resources] The distribution is highly concentrated. In 2021, the production of cobalt in Congo (DRC) will account for 70% of the world. Cobalt ore resources are relatively scarce, especially independent cobalt deposits, which are mainly associated with iron, nickel, copper, and other minerals. my country's cobalt reserves are about 80,000 tons, accounting for 1.05% of the world's total reserves. In addition, there are problems such as low grades, high separation difficulty, many associated ores, and small-scale ore deposits. Less domestic supply and more demand lead to a high degree of external dependence on cobalt raw materials. According to SMM, there are more than 150 known cobalt deposits in China, which are distributed in 24 provinces (regions), mainly in Gansu, Shandong, Yunnan, Hebei, Qinghai, and Shanxi, accounting for 70%.

[Nickel resources] CR4 (the industry's top four share concentration indicators) exceeds 67%. In 2021, Indonesia and the Philippines will account for 50% of the world's nickel resource production. Mining policies will have a greater impact on nickel prices. Nickel ore types are mainly divided into two categories: sulfide copper-nickel ore and laterite nickel ore. According to SMM, my country's nickel resource reserves are 2.8 million tons, accounting for about 2.94% of the world's total, and mainly copper-nickel sulfide ore, accounting for about 90% of the country's total. 60%.

Well, the above is the whole content of the lithium battery recycling industry brought to you by Microcharge today. I hope that through the introduction of the above content, you will have a certain understanding of the lithium battery recycling industry. For more information on lithium batteries, please refer to the following. :

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