The anode material path of lithium battery becomes clear

In 2012, lithium ion battery accounted for 41% of the global lithium terminal demand, and the input and output performance of lithium ion battery mainly depends on the structure and performance of the battery internal materials. The internal materials of these batteries include anode materials, electrolytes, membranes and anode materials. Among them, the cathode material is the most core key material, accounting for 30-40% of the cost of lithium battery. The rapid expansion of the consumer electronics market (laptops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) has led to an explosion in demand for lithium batteries. In the future, electric vehicles and energy storage power stations in the field of new energy will also rely on lithium-ion batteries. The global lithium ion battery industry is expected to reach 27.81 billion usd by 2013. In 2015, the industrial application of new energy vehicles will drive the global lithium ion battery industry to reach 52.32 billion us dollars. With the expansion of lithium battery industry, lithium battery anode material industry is also in the stage of rapid expansion, in which the application of lithium cobalt oxide is the most mature.

Application field differentiation of positive materials

At present, lithium battery anode materials being used and developed mainly include lithium cobalt oxide, lithium nickel cobalt oxide, lithium nickel manganese cobalt ternary materials, lithium manganese oxide of spinel type, lithium iron phosphate of peridot type, etc. At present, China's anode materials mainly include lithium cobalt oxide, ternary materials, lithium manganese oxide and lithium iron phosphate. At present, lithium cobalt oxide is still the main positive electrode material in the field of small lithium electricity, mainly used in the traditional 3C field. Ternary materials and lithium manganate are mainly used in small lithium batteries. In Japan and South Korea, their technologies as power batteries are relatively mature. They are mainly used in electric tools, electric bicycles and electric cars. Lithium iron phosphate is applied in the field of power battery in China, and it is the direction of future energy storage battery development. It is mainly used in the fields of base station and data center energy storage, home energy storage and wind-solar energy storage.

Lithium cobalt cobalt will gradually be replaced

Cobalt acid lithium because of simple production technology and the advantages of the electrochemical performance is stable, the first commercially available, with high discharge voltage, stable charge and discharge voltage, high specific energy, has important application in the field of small consumer batteries, due to the rapid development of the consumer electronics market, cobalt acid lithium is lithium battery cathode material in the sales volume of the largest material, but its cost is high, and is not conducive to environmental protection, specific capacity utilization rate is low, the battery life is short, poor safety. Ternary materials integrate the advantages of lithium cobalt acid, lithium nickel acid and lithium manganese acid three materials, with price advantage, but its application is affected by the price of cobalt, when the price of cobalt is high, the price of ternary materials is lower than lithium cobalt acid, has a strong market competitiveness; But when the price of cobalt is low, the advantage of ternary materials over lithium cobalt oxide is greatly reduced. At present, lithium cobalt oxide materials have a tendency to be replaced by ternary materials.

Ternary material has the advantage of low cost

The ternary materials are nickel, cobalt and manganese. While the Roadster, Tesla's first car, was launched with an 18650 cobalt-lithium battery, its second mass-production Model, the model-s, USES a custom panasonic ternary material battery, known as a nickel-cobalt-aluminum ternary anode material battery. The high cost of lithium cobalt battery is evident in the comparison between the two models of Tesla. The number of batteries used in the model-s reaches over 8,000, which is more than 1,000 more than that of the Roadster, but the cost has been reduced by 30%, thanks to the better cost control of the ternary battery. At present, there is still a big gap between NCM ternary materials for high-performance lithium power in China and the international market, and there are double obstacles in equipment and technology in stability control. The development is obviously backward, and the NCM ternary materials have been widely used in foreign countries, but there are no products in Chinese enterprises.

Lithium manganate will also increase the proportion of lithium manganate

Due to safety problems and high price, lithium cobalt oxide anode materials have not been fully introduced into the field of power batteries. But the manganese acid lithium has the raw material manganese resources to be rich, the price is low and does not have the toxicity and so on the merit. Lamellar lithium manganate LiMnO2 is used as the cathode material of lithium ion battery. The disadvantage is that although the capacity is very high, it is not stable at high temperature, and it is easy to change to spinel structure during charging and discharging, resulting in rapid capacity attenuation. At present, domestic large anode material manufacturers are actively developing lithium manganate materials for high temperature cycle improvement. Applications of lithium manganate are concentrated in the consumer battery market, mainly mixed with lithium cobalt oxide for low-end steel-case batteries, or used solely for power batteries, which are dominated by electric bicycle batteries. It is predicted that by 2015, the proportion of ternary materials in anode materials will rise to 35%, the proportion of lithium manganate will rise to 30%, and the proportion of lithium cobalt will decrease to 25%.

There is still room for improvement in lithium iron phosphate technology

In the field of power batteries, the low-temperature performance and multirate discharge of lithium iron phosphate anode materials have reached the level of lithium cobalt oxide, which is currently the most promising power battery material in the market. However, due to the technical bottleneck, the consistency and unit energy density of lithium iron phosphate battery are low. In the field of positive electrode materials for power batteries, Chinese, Japanese, Korean and American power battery enterprises adopt different material systems. Chinese enterprises are dominated by lithium iron phosphate, while Japanese and Korean enterprises are dominated by lithium manganese acid and ternary materials. At present, there is a relatively mature lithium iron phosphate energy storage system in China. However, compared with the global technical level, the development of lithium iron phosphate material industrialization in China is still lower than that in developed countries. For example, the continuity and stability of material production and application are insufficient, and the energy density cannot be improved. In 2012, the global growth rate of lithium iron phosphate was 56.66% compared with 5.77% in China.

Strategy focus on lithium products deep processing leader

All studies suggest that over the next three years based on lithium brine and mining under the big pattern of excess production capacity, battery and small profit condition and price trend of the anode materials restricted the base price of the brine lithium salt and mining space, the future lithium products prices will appear differentiation, high barriers to deep processing products will get higher prices due to the tight supply and demand structure, and the basis of excess lithium brine and ore prices would be flat or even slightly lower; Ganfeng lithium industry (002460, stock bar) due to the reduction of basic lithium cost, the increase of the price of high-barrier deep processing products and the increase of gross profit per ton, the production capacity release in the next few years will result in the rapid growth of the performance. Considering the company's characteristics of both attack and defense, as well as the undervalued competitive advantage and resource value, the "buy" rating will be maintained with a target price of 30 yuan.

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