Regulations from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other ministries require that, since 2016, passenger-vehicle manufacturers must provide a warranty of at least 8 years or 120,000 km for core components such as the battery, electronic control, and motor – the “three electrics”. By the end of 2024, China’s stock of new-energy vehicles had reached 31.4 million, and with many new-energy vehicles’ warranties expiring, a “retirement wave” is unfolding across the country. Qingdao, for its part, has introduced pure-electric buses in batches since 2011; by 2023, over 5,000 buses citywide achieved 100% new-energy adoption. Handling the retired power batteries awaiting treatment has become a top priority for the transportation industry chain.
Recently, North Star Recycling (Qingdao) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter “North Star Recycling”) partnered with Qingdao Zhenqing Bus Group to proactively fulfill its responsibility for retired power battery recycling, carrying out standardized recycling and disposal of the power batteries from the first batch of 100 retired buses, recovering over 200 tonnes of retired batteries in total. Certified by the national Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as a compliant enterprise for the comprehensive utilization of spent power batteries from new-energy vehicles, North Star Recycling possesses low-carbon recycling technology and qualifications to achieve safe, efficient, and low-carbon recovery and reuse of retired power batteries.
North Star Recycling’s team of professional engineers traveled to the bus base in Huangdao District, Qingdao, where they completed the safe dismantling of the first batch of lithium iron phosphate battery packs on-site. The largest bus echelon-battery utilization project in the Jiaodong Peninsula region has entered its implementation phase, laying a key foundation for Qingdao to build a “new-energy vehicle retired power battery recycling and utilization system” and achieve standardized, safe, and efficient utilization of power batteries.
Technology Breakthroughs Enable Efficient Recovery
North Star Recycling’s project team adopts a multi-dimensional battery health assessment approach to achieve rapid residual-value testing of individual battery packs. Through intelligent automated dismantling clusters, it ensures a “zero-accident, zero-pollution” process throughout. After dismantling, the batteries are further inspected and stored at North Star Recycling’s benchmark low-carbon green recycling plant. Self-developed intelligent equipment such as reconnaissance and handling robots and intelligent inspection robots conduct all-weather, blind-spot-free autonomous patrols, with inspection data uploaded synchronously to a smart fire-protection cloud platform, enabling digitalization and visualization of information and real-time monitoring and early warning, maximizing safety.
Building and Optimizing the Recycling Loop
This batch of batteries will be given new life through North Star Recycling’s comprehensive echelon-utilization technology. After refined testing and health assessment, battery units suited to relevant application scenarios are precisely identified and, based on demand, designed, reassembled, and packaged – for use in forklifts, golf carts, portable medical equipment, off-grid systems, and base-station backup power, among others – maximizing the value of retired batteries, reducing resource waste, and lessening environmental burden. In addition, North Star Recycling achieves whole-process supervision through digital traceability, giving every battery its own “ID card”.
Creating Significant Environmental Benefits
Through enclosed dismantling and harmless treatment, North Star Recycling brings pollutant emissions close to zero and standardizes recovery to prevent risks. Echelon utilization of batteries not only extends the value chain and reduces mineral resource consumption, but also delivers significant carbon-reduction benefits: across the full life cycle it lowers energy use, cutting carbon emissions by over 60% compared with manufacturing new batteries.
Jointly Building Qingdao’s Retired Power Battery Recycling and Utilization System
This Qingdao hundred-tonne bus-battery recycling project by North Star Recycling has achieved centralized, large-scale compliant treatment of retired power batteries. It is not only a key link in Qingdao’s retired power battery recycling and utilization system and a landmark breakthrough in closing the regional new-energy industry chain loop, but also provides a benchmark paradigm for retired-battery governance nationwide through “standardized technology + replicable models”.
Facing the scaled-up wave of power battery retirements across the country in 2024, and starting from the integration of Qingdao Zhenqing Bus Group’s transport network with North Star Recycling’s technological strengths, Qingdao can build a bus-battery recycling system covering the Jiaodong Peninsula. North Star Recycling will also actively promote standardized recycling of Qingdao’s retired power batteries, strengthen the closed-loop ecosystem of the city’s new-energy and battery industry chains, help Qingdao become a circular-economy demonstration city, and take the “Qingdao model” nationwide.