With the rapid growth of Shanxi Guoxin Energy Corporation Limited(600617) car ownership, the retirement of power batteries is also gradually rising. In 2022, the first batch of power batteries put into the market ushered in a “retirement wave”. According to the data of China Automotive Technology Research Center, by 2020, China has decommissioned more than 200000 tons of power batteries, and the data will be as high as 800000 tons in the next five years.
Relevant practitioners said that the power battery is a consumable, and its performance decays with the number of charges. When the actual capacity of the battery decays below 80% of the rated capacity, it is no longer applicable to the vehicle, and the passenger car may be shorter.
It is reported that a Finnish owner bought an electric used car of an international famous brand in 2012 and had problems after driving 1500 kilometers. The dealer told the owner that there was no way but to replace the battery, and the cost of replacing the battery was at least 20000 euros, while the second-hand market price of the car was only about 35000 euros. Therefore, the high cost of replacing batteries is difficult for most car owners to accept, and has also become a major pain point of new energy vehicles.
Environmental pollution can not be ignored. Experts say that a 20 gram mobile phone battery can pollute 1 square kilometers of land for about 50 years. A larger power battery, if not recycled scientifically, will cause a huge ecological environmental disaster.
The power battery contains heavy metals such as cobalt, manganese and nickel, which cannot be degraded by itself. Taking manganese as an example, it will pollute the air, water and soil. When the manganese in the air exceeds 500 μ g / m3, it can cause manganese poisoning; If drinking water with high manganese content, people’s central nervous system will be damaged, and even toxic symptoms such as tremor and mental decline may occur. Lithium hexafluorophosphate in the electrolyte is easy to hydrolyze in the air environment to produce phosphorus pentafluoride, hydrogen fluoride and other harmful substances, which may pose a greater threat to the environment.
With a large number of new energy vehicle power batteries entering the scrap link, how to deal with the retired batteries has become an urgent development problem. The Ministry of industry and information technology has successively issued and implemented a series of policies, such as the Interim Measures for the administration of the recycling of new energy vehicle power batteries and the administrative measures for the echelon utilization of new energy vehicle power batteries.
Luo Junjie, director of the operation monitoring and Coordination Bureau of the Ministry of industry and information technology, once said that doing a good job in the recycling of power batteries is of great significance to protect the ecological environment and social security and improve the comprehensive utilization of resources. At the same time, it is also of great significance to promote the healthy development of the new energy vehicle industry.
Retired batteries may be energy carriers or heavy environmental burdens. The industry is looking for a subversive and innovative technology for battery cycle life.
In October 2020, Greenpeace, an international environmental protection organization, and the China Environmental Protection Federation jointly issued the report on sustaining resources: Research Report on the potential of new energy vehicle battery recycling economy in 2030, which pointed out that by 2030, the power batteries of passenger electric vehicles around the world will face a large-scale decommissioning of 463gwh of total electricity. In order to alleviate the global crisis of “lithium battery dump”, Swiss AGV equipment manufacturing enterprises have long used Gree titanium battery as the power battery of their AGV smart car.
The relevant person in charge said, “there are many kinds of power batteries, but we don’t want to make more ‘waste’ batteries. Only Gree titanium batteries can achieve ultra-low temperature and multiple scenarios, long life, low replacement, fast charging and high efficiency, while taking into account safety and reliability! It is also of great significance to protect the ecological environment and social security and improve the comprehensive utilization of resources.”
The data show that the structure of lithium titanate material is stable. In the process of charge and discharge, the embedding and de embedding of lithium ions will not cause the change of crystal structure. It is called “zero strain material”, which not only improves the safety of the battery, but also improves the cycle performance and service life of the electrode. In the Gree titanium testing center recognized by CNAs, a group of Gree titanium batteries have passed the deep charge discharge cycle test for more than 38000 times. The experimental data show that the attenuation is only 8%.
According to the calculation data, the Gree titanium battery first used by Beijing public transport has been more than 7 years up to now, and its power attenuation rate is less than 5% , and the battery capacity retention rate is still more than 95% , which solves the problem that the battery attenuation of traditional lithium battery new energy public transport vehicles is serious after several years of operation and can not meet the requirements of all day operation It is necessary to increase the cost and replace the battery.
The service life of Gree titanium battery is up to 30 years. Based on the 10-year service life of a new energy vehicle, the power battery can be recycled after the end of the service life of the vehicle, and Gree titanium battery can continue to be used in major energy storage fields for up to 20 years. In other words, Gree titanium battery with 30-year cycle service life can not only be widely used in many fields such as new energy vehicles, families, industry, rail transit and military energy storage for the first time, but also has “super long service life” even if it is recycled and reused.
Li Li, inspector of the Department of energy conservation and comprehensive utilization of the Ministry of industry and information technology, believes that the development of pure electric vehicle industry is the general trend of China’s industrial development, and battery recycling is a major topic of energy conservation and environmental protection. The 30-year long life cycle and recycling of Gree titanium battery are worthy of further discussion.
The author believes that the environmental friendly performance of Gree titanium battery with “super long vitality” can effectively alleviate the ecological crisis caused by the “retirement tide” of new energy vehicle batteries, has broader market prospects and application value, and is a better choice to help the construction of green ecological civilization.
