Volvo/Ford enters lithium battery recycling
sourcelibattery.ofweek
publisherAshlee Peng
time2022/02/24
- A large number of power batteries are about to be retired, and the battery recycling market has become a new track.
Recently, the US company Redwood Materials announced that it will launch an electric vehicle battery recycling program in California. Ford Motor and Volvo Cars have participated in the program and become its first partners.
Redwood Materials said the company's battery recycling will be regardless of brand or form of power, accepting all lithium-ion and nickel-metal hydride batteries in California, and implementing a free policy for customers who provide car batteries.
It is understood that Redwood Materials, founded in 2017, is committed to developing new processes for material recycling focusing on electric vehicle batteries, inventing sustainable materials by creating a circular supply chain, recycling waste, and reducing the impact of used batteries on the environment.
According to the disclosure, Redwood Materials' recycling technology is able to recycle 95% of the nickel, cobalt, aluminum and graphite, and more than 80% of the lithium in used batteries. As of now, it recycles 6 GWh of lithium-ion batteries per year, which is enough to power 60,000 electric vehicles.
Behind the entry of leading OEMs into the lithium battery recycling project, under the background of carbon neutrality, superimposing the large-scale demand for lithium batteries from the new energy market, how to efficiently utilize retired batteries has become an unavoidable issue.
GGII data shows that China's power battery shipments will be 220GWh in 2021, an increase of 175% compared to 2020. Strong market demand will undoubtedly bring a large number of retired batteries.
According to the "Research Report on the Circular Economy Potential of New Energy Vehicle Batteries in 2030" released by Greenpeace, a global environmental protection organization, from 2021 to 2030, China's retired power batteries will reach 708GWh. At the same time, if these batteries are used for effective cascade utilization, it will reduce nearly 33.42 million tons of carbon emissions compared with manufacturing the same amount of new batteries.
Based on this, domestic power battery companies, OEMs, and material companies, including CATL, BYD, and GEM, have also entered this track, in order to help the zero-carbon economy and create their own new growth points.
It is worth noting that lithium battery recycling is still a new track, and the market pattern has not yet been formed. The sooner companies enter this field, they will be expected to gain an advantage in the increasingly fierce competition.
Contact:Ashlee Peng
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