The price of artificial graphite in new energy industry

Through the development trend of the artificial graphite market, combined with the country’s attention to the graphite industry, the current hot content of artificial graphite is adopted by the industry analysis method, and the price advantages of artificial graphite compared with other different types of graphite are introduced. At present, the downstream application market of lithium batteries is divided into three major fields: electric vehicles, 3C consumer electronics, and industrial energy storage. In recent years, the global outbreak of new energy vehicles has driven the growth of demand for lithium batteries, thereby driving the continuous increase in demand for negative electrodes.

The importance of artificial graphite in the new energy industry

Artificial graphite is the main material of lithium batteries. In a broad sense, it refers to all graphite materials obtained by organic carbonization and then graphitized at high temperature; in a narrow sense, it refers to carbonaceous materials with low magazine content as aggregates, coal tar and other materials as sticky materials. Caking agent is a bulk solid material obtained through batching, kneading, molding, carbonization and graphitization. There are various types of artificial graphite, such as graphite electrodes, graphite anodes, etc., which are used in different scenarios according to their different characteristics. Artificial graphite is very different from natural graphite in crystal structure, organizational structure, physical form and physical and chemical properties.

Manufacturing cost of artificial graphite

The artificial graphite process is complex, and it needs to be produced through processes such as raw material pretreatment, granulation, graphitization, and finished product screening. Among them, graphitization processing is the most important production link. Increasing the proportion of self-supplied graphitization can significantly reduce production costs. Graphitization is a high-temperature treatment method. The higher the thermal temperature, the higher the degree of graphitization. However, it is extremely power-consuming and belongs to a high-energy-consuming production process. In the artificial graphite process, the graphitization cost is the highest, accounting for about 60% of the manufacturing cost of artificial graphite.

The future mainstream direction of the graphite market

At present, graphite materials are the mainstream, and the future prospects of silicon-carbon composite materials can be expected. The negative electrode material is mainly artificial graphite, and a variety of negative electrode materials such as mesophase carbon microspheres, soft carbon/hard carbon, amorphous carbon, lithium titanate, and silicon carbon alloy coexist. Based on the comprehensive consideration of cost and performance, artificial graphite is widely used in the power battery market due to its good cycle performance and relatively superior safety performance, and its demand will increase in the future.

Natural graphite has high cost performance, good capacity and low temperature performance, and can be used in both the consumer electronics battery market and the power battery market. Other carbon-based materials and non-carbon-based materials, such as soft/hard carbon, lithium titanate, tin-based materials, silicon-carbon alloys and other new anode materials are currently in the trial stage, and may be gradually industrialized in the next few years. Among them, graphite The development prospect of olefin and silicon carbon composite materials is good. Therefore, both artificial graphite and natural graphite can be used as mainstream materials in the future, putting great pressure on graphite manufacturers.

Recently, my country’s artificial graphite shipments will be 605,000 tons, and the pressure of raw material price increases will continue to be transmitted downstream, which has also led to the tight supply of artificial graphite anode materials in the market. Due to the tight supply of raw materials, the price of raw materials for anode materials has risen. Secondly, in the process of graphitization in the production process of anode materials, graphitization OEM manufacturers are the focus of supervision by the environmental protection department. Small factories are rectified, large factories are difficult to expand, and production capacity is compressed. . Therefore, the production capacity of supplying artificial graphite graphitization process is further compressed, which also results in an increase in the value of artificial graphite.