In the traditional concept of sustainable development, there is an antagonistic relationship between protecting the environment and the development of enterprises, especially in automobile companies, and raising carbon emission standards seems to increase costs and limit them. The innovation of the circular economy is that enterprises do not blindly increase costs, but through technological upgrading, recycling from all levels of production, use and recycling, which is conducive to reducing enterprise costs in the long run.
China is accelerating the transformation of its energy consumption structure and achieving the country's goal of shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The new energy automobile industry should undertake the heavy responsibility of carbon emission reduction and carbon peaking, which is the original intention of the national automobile electrification strategy. In 2020, China proposed the "New Energy Vehicle Industry Development Plan" to promote the development of the whole value chain of power batteries, establish a material guarantee system such as cobalt and nickel, and achieve a sales volume of 20% of new energy vehicles by 2025 and 50% in 2035.
Recently, at a Volkswagen technical exchange meeting, the reporter learned that Volkswagen supports China's battery life cycle industry chain. There are currently 27 state-certified whitelisted battery recycling companies in China. Volkswagen works with battery recycling companies that meet national qualifications to create a power battery life cycle industry chain and provide corresponding technical support. In short, to create a "closed loop" for power battery recycling and reuse, all aspects of battery recycling have produced a close connection that has never been seen before through technology. When such symbiosis occurs between enterprises, it validates a specific term in sustainability theory - the circular economy.
According to the data, the old battery recycling path, the informal recycling channels of decommissioned power batteries and the backward recycling method will cause serious pollution to the environment and cause damage to human health. The industry advocates the use of advanced technology to recycle precious metals in a high proportion, which will reduce the pressure on the exploitation of mineral resources and is conducive to the sustainable and healthy development of the industry. Develop the echelon utilization of decommissioned power batteries, and at the same time do a good job in the environmental protection treatment of decommissioned power batteries, fully tap the value of the whole life cycle of power batteries, and create an environmental protection industry of the whole industry chain, which is conducive to the healthy and orderly development of the industry. Volkswagen is an active practitioner of this.
Take Volkswagen's Salzgitter power battery recycling project as an example. Volkswagen's Salzgitter plant is conducting a pilot project for battery recycling to realize the recycling of power batteries Power battery materials include aluminum, copper, steel, nickel, lithium, cobalt, manganese and other materials such as graphite and plastics. For the recovery of power batteries, there are mainly pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy, pyrometallurgy is mainly nickel and cobalt as the main object, the material recovery rate is only about 50%, and the raw material recovery rate of hydrometallurgy is more than 95%.
In addition, Volkswagen uses highly automated mechanical preparation and efficient hydrometallurgy to recover batteries: testing and judging of recovered power batteries, remaining batteries with higher performance enter the cascade utilization, batteries that cannot be cascaded will be disassembled through a highly automated process, the housing and components will be disassembled, and the battery system will be disassembled into modules and crushed.
Specific to the operational level, after the battery module is crushed, the crushed particles are dried and the moisture in the electrolyte is evaporated, and the dried particles are sieved to a valuable "black powder", including a mixture of lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt and graphite, and through further physical screening, magnetic metals, non-magnetic metals and plastic particles are separated. The most important materials are bagged separately and transported to partner factories for further recycling and utilization. Volkswagen's partner companies then separate them into separate raw materials by hydrometallurgical means, which can be reprocessed into positive precursors of the battery and used in cell manufacturing.
It is reported that Volkswagen supports China's battery life cycle industry chain. There are currently 27 state-certified whitelisted battery recycling companies in China. Volkswagen through the national qualification of battery recycling enterprises to work together to create a power battery life cycle industry chain, and provide corresponding technical support: 1, all batteries into the recycling system will be traced according to the requirements, while uploading the national traceability system, after testing does not meet the ladder utilization or do not allow the ladder utilization of the battery will directly enter the battery pack disassembly, cell crushing process. 2. The battery that is recycled enters the test and identification link through safe packaging, transportation and storage. 3. Batteries that meet the ladder utilization will be classified according to the grade after testing. 4. The superior battery will be used as a spare part for the battery of the electric vehicle, the medium battery will be used for the low-speed electric vehicle, and the low-grade battery will be used as an energy storage and backup power station. 5. Batteries that do not conform to the echelon utilization are dismantled into battery modules after discharge and flexible automatic dismantling lines, and are refined into battery raw materials again through mechanical preparation and hydrometallurgy. 6. Cobalt sulfate, nickel sulfate, manganese sulfate and other raw materials for power battery precursors obtained through hydrometallurgy are used in the production and manufacturing of lithium batteries. And this is a standard model for the formal circular economy.
According to the data, Volkswagen brand products are sold to more than 150 markets worldwide and are produced in more than 30 regions in 13 countries. In 2020, the Volkswagen brand delivered a total of 5.3 million vehicles worldwide, including best-selling models such as golf, tiguan, jetta, passat, and ID. Family pure electric model. The Volkswagen brand currently employs 184,000 people worldwide. At the same time, the Volkswagen brand has more than 10,000 dealers and 86,000 dealer employees. With the ACCELERATOR strategy, Volkswagen is accelerating its transformation into a software-driven mobility service provider.