With the outbreak of the new energy automobile industry and the frequency and speed of the upgrading of mobile phones and laptops, the demand for lithium ion is increasing, and the NMP industry will usher in a new development opportunity. Driven by the lithium ion battery industry, the market size of China's NMP industry will continue to increase from 2017 to 2021, reaching 20.759 billion yuan in 2021.
NMP is more used in the field of electric vehicle power battery and conductive, solar and wind power energy storage device energy storage battery, as the dissolution of positive material adhesive polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), carbon nanotube conductive slurry (CNT) diffusion. The demand for lithium in the downstream market has accounted for nearly 80%.
In recent years, the NMP layout of major Chinese enterprises has a strong momentum. The existing NMP capacity of major enterprises is about 650,000 tons/year, and the planned and under construction capacity is about 170,000 tons/year. New energy vehicles are developing rapidly, and the demand for lithium batteries continues to rise. As NMP benefits from the rapid development of the new energy automobile industry, lithium electric binder solvent has become the fastest growing field of downstream application of NMP. According to the data of Qidian Lithium Electric, in 2021, China's output of NMP was more than 500,000 tons, without import, and export was close to 100,000 tons. The apparent consumption of NMP in China was about 400,000 tons. In the past few years, the consumption of NMP in China has shown a rapid growth rate of over 30%, which is also a fast growing product in China's chemical industry. At present, the competition in the low-end NMP market has become increasingly fierce. In the high-end field, due to the high entry threshold, fewer enterprises with production capacity, foreign brands occupy a considerable part of the market share, and the prospect of import substitution is very broad. The high-end market will become the key battlefield for enterprises to fight for in the future. Globally, the leading manufacturers of NMP are BASF in Germany, Ashland in the United States, Mitsubishi Chemical in Japan, Leander Bassel in Belgium, etc.
The threshold of entry to the NMP industry is not high. Under the influence of the continuous boom of the downstream lithium battery industry, the number of enterprises engaged in the production and recovery of NMP in the industry keeps increasing, and the industry scale keeps expanding.
Since NMP is mainly used as a solvent, most of the NMP in actual production will be recycled, saving cost on the one hand, and reducing the impact on the environment on the other hand. In the production of lithium batteries, NMP is used in the positive coating pulping process, dissolve the positive material, PVDF binder, slurry coated to the positive plate after drying, solvent NMP can all volatilize, after condensation collection and recovery, after distillation impurity can be reused in the new liquid.
According to industry data, 1GWh power battery will use about 1500 tons of NMP solvent. With the rapid growth of the output of power battery, it also gives birth to a huge market of NMP recycling rectification. 2015 -- 2022 Power battery production and NMP recovery market capacity:
In particular, since 2021, the NMP recovery market has witnessed explosive growth. This year, a large number of recycling and rectification units have been installed in China, with the total recycling capacity exceeding 400,000 tons/year. According to the trend of power battery production in 2022, it is estimated that 825,000 tons of NMP will be required to recover rectification, and the recovery rectification capacity is expected to exceed one million tons. At present, new energy vehicles have become the mainstream trend of global development, and China is the mainstay of new energy vehicles and power battery production. It is expected to maintain an average annual growth of 20%~30% in the next few years, which will leave a broader market space for NMP recycling rectification.
