Lead-acid battery industry access conditions that companies need to cross several channels

Since May of this year, China's lead battery industry has experienced a "scratch treatment" type of remediation, due to heavy metal pollution problems, lead battery industry has been pushed to the cusp, a large number of companies have been closed, very few resumption of production. To this day, the “pure storm” in the lead storage battery industry is still upgrading.

According to the reporter’s understanding, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology commissioned the Lead-Accumbent Subcommittee of the China Electrical Equipment Industry Association to start drafting the “Acceptance Conditions for Lead-Acid Battery Industry” (hereinafter referred to as the “Entry Conditions”). After discussing the drafts widely, the draft has been formed. It has been sent to relevant departments of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and released in due course. Analysts pointed out that due to the "access conditions" for battery companies put forward strict environmental protection requirements, once introduced, will make half of the companies face the choice of life and death.

How much environmental damage is caused by explosive growth?

Due to the small size of most enterprises, lack of investment in environmental protection, and poorly equipped facilities, their pollutant emissions simply cannot reach the mark. Not long ago, when interviewed in Henan, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, many provinces and cities were building a large number of lead battery manufacturing enterprises and equipment manufacturing plants. There was a time when production equipment was in short supply. Industry analysts believe that during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, lead-acid battery production will double, with an annual growth rate of about 15%, and lead consumption will reach about 4 million tons.

In recent years, with the rapid growth of the automobile, telecommunications, and electric vehicle industries, China's lead-acid batteries have experienced an "explosive" growth period. In 2010, China has become the largest lead battery producer in the world. However, at present, the lead storage battery industry still belongs to extensive development. There are too many enterprises and the scale is generally too small. There is a large number of low-level redundant construction. Due to the lack of relevant regulations and industry self-discipline, a large number of non-environmental protection facilities and non-qualified companies exist, and the pollution problem is particularly serious.

It is understood that lead pollution is mainly concentrated in the production of lead batteries and waste lead batteries recycling. Since the lead has a low melting point and is easily volatilized at a high temperature, in the production of a battery, lead is melted to prepare an alloy, and the casting process can easily lead to lead contamination. According to a statistic data obtained by the reporter, in 2010, China's lead battery industry consumed about 2.8 million tons of lead, which accounted for about 75% of the country's total use, discharged more than 11 million tons of lead-containing wastewater, and contained more than 200,000 tons of lead-containing solid waste. .

In an interview, the reporter learned that the current level of domestic lead-acid battery manufacturing companies is quite different. There are currently the most advanced production lines in the world, and there are still the most backward processes using pure hand-workshops. According to statistics from the China Battery Industry Association, there are currently more than 2,000 lead battery companies in China, with about 1800 enterprises with production licenses, and only 200 companies with output value of over 5 million yuan, less than 10% of the total number. The output value is less than 100 million yuan.

Although lead smoke, lead dust, sulfuric acid mist, and sewage generated during the production of lead-acid batteries have matured and effective treatment technologies, due to the small size of most enterprises, insufficient investment in environmental protection, and poorly equipped equipment, their pollutant emissions could not be met. . During the interview, the reporter found that some companies' pollution control facilities were mostly grade 1 dust, and they could not ensure stable discharge standards; some enterprises even installed pollution control facilities, but due to the operating costs, these facilities also become “furnishings”; Some enterprises have problems such as improper disposal of hazardous wastes, setting of protection distances and poor implementation.

The chaos in the battery recycling industry lacks effective restrictions on storage, handling, desorption, environmental protection, etc., resulting in the recycling of used lead-acid batteries under the control of individual households, becoming a “heavy-pollution” industry, knocking on a recycled waste lead-acid battery and containing lead. The mud's acid solution is thrown away. If it is "ambient", it is poured into the drain; then the grid is taken out and put into a simple smelting furnace to melt it. A lot of lead smoke rises in the open production process. From the wind, it floats away and degenerates into lead powder; the plastic casing of the battery may already contain trace amounts of lead, but after simple processing, it can be sold to manufacturers that produce cheap plastic products.

This is the production process of a typical domestic lead-acid battery recycling company.

At present, the departments engaged in the recovery of waste lead batteries in China include material recovery companies, material recycling companies, battery manufacturing companies, lead recycling companies, and self-employed buyers. However, the main channels for recycling are in the hands of a large number of individual professional households.

Waste lead storage batteries have a high recovery value and almost all materials can be recycled. Therefore, there is basically no random discarding phenomenon. A recycling system has been formed on the market, but due to the lack of environmental awareness among small-scale industrial operators, they are in the process of collection and transportation. Among them, random dismantling, arbitrary inversion of toxic waste acid, "buried" many environmental risks.

According to the reporter's understanding, at present, the recovery of lead-acid batteries is dominated by a large number of individual practitioners and is basically in a disorderly state. Due to the general lack of environmental awareness, coupled with economic interests, a large number of recycling points are manually broken and dismantled. After high-priced lead sheets are sold, acid is dumped at random, and a large amount of lead-containing waste water, lead slag and lead mud enter sewers, waters, and soils. Other low-value materials are thrown away at random, and the lead-containing membrane is incinerated together with ordinary garbage, causing serious pollution.

In China's lead-acid battery recycling system, there are fewer professional recycling companies with recycling qualifications, and most of them are undertaken by individual recyclers. However, at the same time, there are still no effective laws and regulations on the storage, handling, transportation, environmental protection, etc., resulting in the recycling of used lead-acid batteries. This industry, which is characterized by circular economy, has instead become a cause of environmental pollution. "industry.

How to standardize the collection, transportation, and disposal of used batteries to reduce environmental pollution and harm to practitioners has become an urgent problem to be solved.

The industry as a whole has limited monitoring capacity in the blind spot, and the daily supervision cannot be carried out. The overall development of the industry is disorderly. The risk of pollution transfer is quite large. The huge market demand is ahead. The price of products continues to rise, and the lead storage battery industry has sufficient growth momentum. At the same time, however, the regulatory work in industries such as industry access, sector supervision, environmental management and comprehensive rectification has not grown together, and many problems have been exposed.

Lead-acid battery industry, especially bicycle power battery, showed an explosive growth, and the related industry transfer was active. However, due to the lack of relevant policies for industrial access and elimination of backwardness, the entire industry has developed a disorderly state and the risk of pollution transfer is considerable.

During the interview, the reporter learned that battery companies in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places have begun to shift to the central and western regions. In many places, lead-acid batteries are also encouraged as an emerging energy project, which can easily lead to pollution transfer. According to the relevant requirements of the country, lead battery production enterprises must have complete environmental protection facilities to provide environmental protection department certification, but in specific operations, companies often fraudulently take "lead acid battery product production license."

At the same time, in some places, the status of lead storage battery companies in the area was not well-understood, which objectively caused a regulatory blind spot. Some places only monitor pollutants related to emission reduction targets, and do not include high-risk pollution factors such as lead in the monitoring area; monitoring monitoring or even acceptance monitoring in some places lacks monitoring of characteristic pollutants; the county-level environmental protection agencies basically do not Most of the monitoring capabilities of lead-containing waste gas do not have the ability to monitor lead-containing waste water, leading to the inability of day-to-day supervision of lead storage battery companies.

The entry barriers increase will promote the industry reshuffle business layout, cleaner production, environmental protection equipment, elimination of backward production capacity and processes, etc. Requirements will be raised comprehensively Experts believe that the lead-acid battery pollution problem has become the biggest obstacle to the development of renewable lead and even the lead industry. Pollution is in production, recycling and reuse. Therefore, it is imperative to improve the industry's threshold by formulating "access conditions."

According to the “admission requirements” draft, the access threshold for the lead storage battery industry will increase substantially, and the industry may usher in a wave of reshuffle. Analysts pointed out that due to the access conditions will be unprecedentedly stringent environmental protection requirements for battery companies, once the implementation of the battery industry in China will have a large number of companies facing the choice of life and death.

“The main consideration for the drafting of “Entry Conditions” is pollution prevention and control,” said Xu Hong, secretary-general of the China Electrotechnical Society’s Lead-Acid Battery Professional Committee, in an interview with the reporter. According to understanding, in accordance with the principle of rational distribution, total control, optimization of stocks, orderly competition, and environmental protection, the formulation of “access conditions” is currently mainly from enterprise layout, cleaner production, environmental protection equipment, elimination of outdated production capacities and processes. Other aspects should be considered and detailed and strict regulations should be submitted.

For existing enterprises, the "Entry Requirements" requires that they obtain a production license, a safety production license and a pollutant discharge permit in accordance with the law, and carry out post-environmental impact assessments, and require that they use automatic acid distribution, automatic distribution, and brushing within one year. Plates and advanced technologies such as automatic welding or automatic casting and welding, at the same time determined that the existing projects should be used to internal energy-saving emission reduction technology. Industry sources told reporters that in order to meet relevant requirements, a lead battery company must invest at least 5 million yuan in technological transformation funds, and some companies with weaker capabilities can only exit the market.

It is worth noting that according to the "access conditions", the lead battery capacity will no longer expand on the existing basis. Adhere to the principle of equal replacement of new and eliminated production capacity plus market increment, strictly control new construction projects, and make them meet the requirements of the overall planning of resources, energy, ecological environment and land use in the region.

Under the rigid requirements of environmental protection indicators, it is expected that of the more than 2,000 existing lead-acid storage battery companies in China, more than 1,000 will be eliminated, and the industry concentration will be expected to increase substantially. After the improvement of environmental protection and access standards, leading enterprises are expected to win a win in the new market structure brought about by the increase in industry concentration.