How to get through the "last mile" of recycling and treatment in the emerging solid waste market of 100 billion?
As an emerging solid waste, retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment have the dual attributes of environment and resource, and contain both general solid waste and hazardous waste. Their standardized disposal has become an important link of recycling, and has also become one of the focus issues of current environmental supervision.
According to the official website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment recently, in order to promote the waste equipment and consumer goods to enter the main channel of standardized recycling and treatment, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment plans to carry out the special rectification of environmental pollution caused by illegal dismantling of waste equipment and consumer goods nationwide, and has opened a "complaint and report column of illegal dismantling of waste equipment and consumer goods to deal with environmental pollution" on the government website of the Ministry of Ecology and Environment. Focus on collecting clues about environmental pollution in the dismantling and treatment activities of 6 types of waste equipment and consumer goods, such as waste photovoltaic modules and waste fan blades, and severely crack down on illegal dismantling and environmental pollution.
"At present, China's retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment recycling shows a new trend of scale. Statistics show that in 2023, China's retired wind power equipment will recover more than 50,000 tons of metals and other resources; More than 100,000 photovoltaic modules were recovered, and more than 6,000 tons of resources were recovered. However, for the large-scale decommissioning of fan blades, there is no comprehensive promotion of recycling technology and treatment standards, and no laws, regulations and industry system for bulk industrial solid waste recycling. Therefore, the disposal of decommissioned blades has become one of the current difficulties. In addition, photovoltaic module recycling process is more, the process is long, the whole process route and each process must give priority to resource utilization under the premise of harmless, coupled with small factories, small workshops on the living space of regular enterprises, resulting in the profitability of regular enterprises photovoltaic module recycling is weak." At the China Landscape Equipment Recycling Conference and Liaoning Landscape equipment recycling industry promotion conference held recently, an industry expert told reporters that the recycling system, technical standards, pollution control standards and other bottlenecks of retired wind power blades and photovoltaic modules still need to be solved through the deep integration of production, learning and research.
The total market for recycling of scenery equipment will exceed 150 billion yuan.
Cheng Gangqi, director of the Scenery Equipment Recycling Committee of the China Association for Material Recycling, predicted that the total market for wind power and photovoltaic equipment recycling will exceed 150 billion yuan from 2025 to 2035. At that time, this field will form a large-scale development trend. The large-scale development of the retired PV module disposal market mainly depends on specific policies, which may be delayed by 3 to 5 years compared with the recycling of retired wind power equipment.
According to the Scenery Equipment Recycling Committee of China Materials Recycling Association, China will usher in the first batch of large-scale retired wind turbines by 2025, and the scale of retired old wind farms will exceed 1.2GW; From 2030 to 2035, the cumulative scale of retired wind turbines will exceed 100GW; From 2036 to 2040, the cumulative scale of retired wind turbines will reach 150GW. At the same time, starting from 2030, China will enter the intensive period of scrapping photovoltaic modules, and by 2030, the accumulative capacity to be recovered will reach 90MW; Starting from 2035, the total amount to be recycled will explode; In 2040, the cumulative recycling volume is expected to reach 254GW.
According to industry insiders, the recycling technical route of retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment can basically follow the basic principles of dismantling (dismantling) pre-processing -- component remanufacturing (functional repair) -- material-level recycling.
It is estimated that the number of wind turbines that need to be retired in China in the next 3 to 5 years will reach tens of thousands, and about 20 million tons of waste materials will be produced after dismantling. Among them, general solid waste such as steel scrap, copper scrap, concrete and composite materials amounted to nearly 19.7 million tons, and hazardous waste such as waste mineral oil and waste lead-acid batteries amounted to about 300,000 tons.
What are the prominent environmental management problems in the recycling and treatment of retired scenery equipment?
"On the whole, retired wind turbines are characterized by large waste production, complex types and great harm." An industry expert told reporters that at present, the recycling and treatment of retired wind power equipment highlights environmental management problems, including the interweaving and superposition of environmental risks in the disassembly and treatment link, high recycling costs, many blocking points, limited waste resource utilization degree, and insufficient supply of supporting environmental management policies.
For example, in the dismantling process, the cutting of wind turbine blades and steel tower barrels, the dismantling of gear boxes, the crushing of concrete foundation bases and other links may produce dust; Hazardous wastes such as waste lead-acid batteries and waste gear lubricating oil generated in the dismantling process may "run and drip".
In addition, the retired wind power generation equipment is mostly located in remote areas, with large size and difficulty in cutting, high labor cost and transportation cost, and the enthusiasm and initiative of the owner unit to participate in recycling treatment is not strong. The valuable elements in the retired equipment are scattered and low in content, and most of them exist in complex forms such as alloys, which makes it difficult to recover and recycle the precious metals.
"At this stage, the recycling scale of retired wind power equipment in China is small, there is no supporting industrial chain, and the progress of environmental management policy formulation is slow. Most of the wind turbines are still in normal operation during the service period, and the urgency of the owner unit to carry out recycling treatment is not strong. The current recycling or harmless treatment of retired wind power equipment is universal and the binding of guidance technical standard documents is limited, and there is no targeted mandatory recycling treatment requirements." The expert said.
Similar to retired wind power equipment, the disposal of retired photovoltaic modules is still in its infancy and has exposed many environmental management problems.
"At present, the main body of market participation presents the characteristics of savage growth of small workshops and rare leading enterprises. Due to the lack of policies and standards, coupled with obvious shortcomings of technical equipment, secondary pollution is easy to be caused in the disposal process." An industry insider told reporters.
It is understood that more than 80% of the value of waste photovoltaic modules is concentrated in laminated parts, and its efficient dissociation and high-value recovery is the key to achieve recycling. Among them, the removal of packaging material (EVA) film and backplane, to achieve the separation of each group, is the primary premise of high value recovery of valuable elements of laminated parts.
However, "the stripping strength of EVA is large, and the metal recovery rate is only 70% when separated by physical crushing method; The method of chemical reagent dissolution is easy to produce a large amount of waste liquid, serious pollution; Decomposition by thermal transformation is easy to produce harmful gases containing fluoride." Introduction by Wu Benteng, researcher and doctoral supervisor of Guangzhou Institute of Energy Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Huazhong University of Science and Technology professor, doctoral supervisor Luo Guangqian, at present, our country mainly uses heat treatment method for the dissociation of retired photovoltaic laminated parts, that is, the use of high temperature environment treatment, so that the film loss of viscosity and thermal decomposition, high treatment efficiency, the product is easy to separate, with large-scale utilization prospects. However, the existing thermal dissociation technology also has technical bottlenecks, direct high temperature pyrolysis is easy to lead to glass bursting, affecting the product value. The unit price of complete glass recovery is about 0.36 million yuan/ton, and the recovery value reaches 3,240 yuan/ton of photovoltaic panels, but the unit price of broken glass recovery is only about 0.05 million yuan/ton, and the recovery value is 352 yuan/ton of photovoltaic panels. Although the low-temperature adhesive-reducing stripping method can avoid the stripping and crushing problem in the high-temperature heat treatment process, it needs to manually peel the backplane, and the treatment efficiency needs to be improved.
It is urgent to break through the difficulties of core technology, optimize the business model, and coordinate the development of clusters.
"At present, it is urgent to strengthen comprehensive and systematic research on the dismantling and recycling of waste wind power, photovoltaic equipment and other new energy devices, focus on common problems, and break through core technical difficulties. Compared with Europe and the United States and other developed countries and regions, the number of relevant core patents and transformation in China are far lower than the former. It is urgent to increase R&D investment, break patent barriers, and form scientific and technological capabilities to support the circular development of China's huge new energy industry." Wu Pentium pointed out.
According to him, at present, the "retired new energy device recycling research and development platform" undertaken by the Guangzhou Institute of Energy Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been included in the "14th Five-Year Plan" science and education infrastructure construction plan, with 499 million yuan of central investment funds, and is vigorously promoting the construction. The main contents of the project include the construction of intelligent disassembly and sorting technology and equipment platform for retired new energy devices, efficient clean thermal conversion and intelligent equipment platform for hybrid waste, and clean recovery and high-quality regeneration technology platform for waste mixed non-ferrous metals.
Yao Xin, vice president of Tsinghua Suzhou Institute of Environmental Innovation, believes that wind power and photovoltaic industry enterprises should take advantage of the trend of equipment renewal to do a good job in the layout of ecological design production lines, set the design goals of lightweight, easy recycling, easy transportation and easy disassembly, give priority to the selection of recycled materials, upgrade and optimize production and processing equipment, etc.
Yao Xin introduced that the Guidance on promoting the Recycling of retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment takes ecological design as an important part of the construction of wind power and photovoltaic equipment recycling system. The European Union has also successively launched the eco-design directive, energy label regulations, green public procurement standards and EU eco-label regulations and other product green regulations, building a relatively complete green system. Eco-design and energy label are mandatory norms launched by the European Union, and relevant products must meet the requirements of the above norms before they can enter the EU market.
"While continuously strengthening technological upgrading and breaking through the bottleneck problem, we should establish standardized supervision and support and guidance policies and systems, systematically build a clear collaborative development pattern, innovate and optimize business models, and promote the market consumption guidance of recycled products after the recycling of scenery equipment, so as to break through the 'last mile' of wind power and photovoltaic equipment recycling." "Said Du Dongming, deputy general manager of the Northeast branch of China Huaneng Group Co.
Cheng said local governments should strengthen industrial planning and guidance, promote the development of circular economy in the region, and coordinate cluster development with gradual investment.
According to Sun Miao, director of new energy Department of Liaoning Provincial Development and Reform Commission, in order to ensure the sustainable development of new energy in Liaoning province, Liaoning province will focus on the coordinated development of new energy and new energy equipment industry in the future, and build wind power and photovoltaic cycle industry into new quality productivity.
"Wind power and photovoltaic cycle industries are actually reverse reengineering of production links. In this way, we can promote the coordinated development of chemical, metallurgy, building materials, environmental protection, ecological restoration and other industries, and help further optimize and upgrade the province's industrial system." Sun Miao revealed the development idea of Liaoning province to promote recycling industry.
She said: "First of all, to do a good job of planning, the development of wind power and photovoltaic cycle industry must carry out industrial agglomeration. Based on the advantages of the province, we accelerated the construction of the industrial system and concentrated on building one or two key industrial parks. Secondly, wind power and photovoltaic recycling industries are still systematic projects. Therefore, it is necessary to build an equipment recycling system covering green design, standardized recycling, high-value utilization, harmless treatment and other links, and give full play to the role of chain length to encourage manufacturing enterprises, power generation enterprises, operation enterprises, recycling enterprises, utilization enterprises to establish long-term cooperation mechanisms to strengthen industrial cohesion and coordination. Finally, from the government level, it is suggested to subdivide the recycling industry chain of retired wind power and photovoltaic equipment, and focus on supporting high-tech and high value-added links on the basis of eliminating simple treatment methods such as mechanical crushing and landfill."
Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/cxyRvnoVJLaGVp1WvbuQ7g