Lithium determines the future of electric vehicles

Although the new energy vehicles represented by electric vehicles have set off a new round of revolution in the automobile industry in all countries in the world. However, as far as the current stage level is concerned, the development of electric vehicles must, in the final analysis, rely on breakthroughs in lithium battery technology. It can be said that lithium, the third metal element of the periodic table of elements, determines whether the future of electric vehicles is "lithium" or "lithium".

Lithium is the world in fact lithium batteries have entered the social life for many years, lithium-ion batteries with excellent performance has been widely used in digital products such as mobile phones, notebook computers. With the rise of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries and materials have found a huge space for development in a larger application dimension.

Currently, in addition to the development of lithium ion technology earlier, lithium iron phosphate battery is considered to be the most ideal power battery, it has a large discharge capacity, low price, non-toxic and pollution-free, safe performance, a wide range of raw materials, life Long and so on.

According to relevant sources, the electric vehicle market will have a huge market potential as the country will promote the implementation of 200,000 electric vehicle plans in the next five years and drive 10,000-1.6 million tons of lithium carbonate. With the recent strong measures taken by the Ministry of Environmental Protection for heavy metal pollution of lead-acid batteries, the current domestic lead-acid battery production capacity will be affected by more than 60%, which means that at least half of the market space for lead-acid batteries will be replaced by lithium batteries.

It is the expectation of explosive growth of lithium batteries for vehicles that the lithium industry has experienced a recovery on a rational track after the initial overheating. Recently, two major international lithium companies Chemetall Germany and the United States announced that the price of lithium products will be raised since July 1. With the gradual maturity of new energy vehicles, a struggle for the world of lithium has been brewing.

Lithium is still difficult to move but in terms of the current level of technology, there are still lithium can not do it all over the world. Technology is not yet mature and industrialized. It is two crappy issues that need time to be solved.

At present, the power battery used in new energy vehicles is mainly based on lithium iron phosphate and lithium manganese oxide as the cathode material, but its performance, life expectancy and other indicators are not enough to make pure electric vehicles completely replace all the functions of fuel vehicles. It is understood that the current battery energy density is only about 100Wh/kg, the cost is 3-5 yuan / Wh, small capacity, high cost, heavy weight, far from meeting the requirements of electric vehicle industrialization and commercialization. Only when the battery energy density reaches 500Wh/kg or more, can the pure electric vehicle continue to have mileage equivalent to that of a conventional car. To achieve this technology, it is still necessary to develop new battery materials.

According to the existing plan, by 2015, the battery energy density can reach 150Wh/kg, the cost is reduced to 2 yuan/Wh; before and after 2020, the battery energy density can only reach 250Wh/kg, and the cost is 1.5 yuan/Wh. At this point, pure electric vehicles are not enough to rival traditional cars.

In addition to the energy density that hinders the efficiency of the battery, the battery charging and discharging scheme and the battery charging mode selection cannot be ignored. Regardless of the mode, there are common problems: Who should be responsible for site selection, inconsistent vehicle models, battery ownership, and the quality of the batteries that appear during charging or recharging? Whoever is responsible for the safety issues caused by charging or swapping Such as a series of problems that need to be standardized and regulated.

Rare Earth Needs to Save and Use Although lithium is used in many industries, Lithium, as the main character, has a name of “Rare Metal”. It may become a reality in the future battery field.

In fact, the reason why lithium is "rare" is not because of the scarcity of reserves, but because of the difficulty of smelting and extraction.

According to the data from the US Geological Survey, the world’s lithium reserves are 11 million tons. Lithium production reached 27,400 tons in 2008, while lithium carbonate and lithium oxide have an annual extraction volume of about 80,000 tons, equivalent to 15,000 tons of lithium metal. Other lithium metals are derived from spodumene (mainly used in the ceramic industry and are not suitable for use in batteries).

As far as the current technology is concerned, 0.79 kg of lithium carbonate (0.15 kg of lithium) per kilowatt-hour capacity is required, while a plug-in hybrid vehicle (PHEV) battery has an average of 20 kWh of energy. If global car sales reach 70 million units by 2020, and 5% of this figure is calculated for electric vehicles or hybrid electric vehicles, the extra demand exceeds 55,000 tons of lithium carbonate, which has exceeded the global consumption in 2010.

In addition, battery collection is still a problem that has not received enough attention. The electric car industry that has just begun has not spent much effort on disposal of batteries. The complete and mature recovery chain has not yet been formed and started. The most suitable recovery technology at present is the pyrometallurgical smelting technology, in which the heavier metal settles to the bottom of the bath while other oxide slags float on top, and lithium remains in the slag as lithium oxide. Only this lithium oxide can no longer be used to make processing batteries.

One obvious way to reduce demand for key elements of energy is to find alternatives. Toyota and Nissan have already developed rare-earth-free engines for their hybrid and electric vehicles. However, the process of finding alternative elements will be a long and expensive process. After all, it is very rare that an element can directly replace another element.

Therefore, recycling may be the most obvious way to reduce the dependence on these key energy elements. Some experts suggest that government agencies should be involved in the distribution of key elements of energy, and come up with special funds to encourage consumers to recycle these metals.