Industry Hot News ——Issue 073, 1 Jul. 2022

[Electrochemistry] BASF expands production capacity in China with promising applications for manganese-rich battery materials.
According to BASF, BASF Sugo Battery Materials Co., Ltd, with 51% of its shares owned by BASF and 49% by Sugo, is expanding its battery materials production capacity. The new production line can be used to manufacture an advanced portfolio of positive active materials, including polycrystalline and single crystal high nickel and ultra-high nickel-cobalt-manganese oxides, as well as manganese-rich nickel-cobalt-manganese products. The annual production capacity will increase to 100,000 tons.
Key Point: Lithium manganese iron phosphate retains the excellent safety and stability of lithium iron phosphate, with energy density, in theory, close to the ternary battery NCM523. Major domestic manufacturers of cathode materials and batteries are actively participateing in business of lithium manganese iron phosphate.

[Energy storage] The “fourteenth five-year plan” has targeted the pumped energy storage of 270 million kilowatts at the start with more than a trillion in the investment scale.
Recently, the chairman of POWERCHINA published a feature article in the People’s Daily, specifying that during the “14th Five-Year Plan” period, China will focus on the implementation of “double two hundred projects”, that is, the construction of more than 200 pumped storage projects in 200 cities and counties. The initial target is 270 million KW, more than eight times the total installed capacity in the past. Calculated at the investment price at 6,000 yuan/KW, the project will drive 1.6 trillion yuan of investment.
Key Point: The Power Construction Corporation of China is the largest builder of pumped storage in China and has undertaken more than 85% of the survey and design work for key projects in the 14th five-year Plan. It will be more involved in the research and development of industrial policies and standards.

[Chemical] Hydrogenated Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (HBNR) has emerged and may replace PVDF in the field of lithium batteries.
Hydrogenated Nitrile Butadiene Rubber (HNBR) is a modified product of hydrogenated nitrile rubber. It has excellent overall performance in resistance on high and low temperatures, abrasion, ozone, radiation, heat and oxygen aging, and various media. It has been argued in papers about lithium batteries that HNBR can replace PVDF for the bonding of lithium cathode materials and has the potential to be applied in the electrolyte of solid-state batteries. HNBR is free of fluorine and excels in shunts performance.As a binder between positive and negative charges, its theoretical retention rate after 200 times of charging and discharging is about 10% higher than that of PVDF.
Key Point: At present, ,merely four companies worldwide have the capacity to mass production on HNBR, that is,Lanxess of German, Zeon of Japan, Zannan Shanghai of China, and Dawn of China. HNBR produced by two domestic companies are cost-effective, selling at about 250,000 yuan/ton. However, import price of HNBR is at 350,000-400,000 yuan/ton, and the current price of PVDF is 430,000 yuan/ton.

[Environmental protection] The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments issue the Industrial Water Efficiency Improvement Plan.
The Plan has proposed that water consumption per million yuan of industrial value fall 16% year on year by 2025. Steel and iron, paper manufacturing, textiles, food, non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, and other key water-consuming industries have a 5-15% decrease in water intake. The industrial wastewater recycling rate will reach 94%. Measures, such as promoting advanced water-saving technologies, strengthening equipment transformation and upgrading, accelerating digital empowerment, and strict control of new production capacity, will guarantee the implementation of the Industrial Water Efficiency Improvement Plan.
Key Point: A series of energy-saving and carbon reduction initiatives will build up a green product supply system from basic raw materials to end consumer goods. It will focus on areas such as green technology and equipment, digital and intelligent control, industrial resource recycling.

[Carbon Neutrality] Shell and ExxonMobil, together with China, will build China’s first offshore scale CCUS cluster.
Recently, Shell, CNOOC, Guangdong Development and Reform Commission, and ExxonMobil signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to seek opportunities to start a research project on offshore scale carbon capture and storage (CCUS) cluster in Daya Bay District, Huizhou City, Guangdong Province. The four parties intend to jointly build China’s first offshore scale CCUS cluster, with a storage scale of up to 10 million tons/year.
Key Point: The parties will conduct joint research on assessing technology options, establishing business models, and identifying the demand for policy support. Once completed, the project will be conducive to significantly reduce CO2 emissions in the Daya Bay National Economic and Technological Development Zone.

The above information is obtained from public media and is for reference only.