The world is accelerating the energy transition, and the demand for steel alloys will continue to grow. Long-term prospects, the demand for chromium, nickel and molybdenum will gradually flatten, while the demand for manganese will rise sharply.
Driven by the power battery industry, there will be a major change in the long-term demand pattern of only manganese among the bulk alloy metals.
Manganese has been widely used in iron and steel, non-ferrous metallurgy, chemical industry, electronics, batteries, agriculture, medicine and other fields. In 2021, global manganese consumption will exceed 20 million tons. However, in recent years, with the sharp rise in the price of main power battery raw materials and some of its disadvantages, people have begun to pay attention to the role of manganese in power batteries.
On Tesla's "Battery Day" in 2020, Musk proposed a new type of cathode material system, that is, the cathode material contains "1/3 manganese + 2/3 nickel". This year, Musk reiterated that Tesla has been exploring the use of more manganese in batteries and sees potential in manganese. Analysts said that manganese-based batteries are overlooked and cost-effective products.
The application of manganese in lithium battery cathode materials is currently mainly based on lithium manganate and nickel cobalt lithium manganate (ternary material). The advantages are its high energy density and relatively low cost, while the disadvantages are mainly reflected in poor electrochemical performance. , the number of cycles is small, etc.
Lithium iron manganese phosphate has become one of the most important technical improvement directions for lithium iron phosphate. Soochow Securities predicts that this new technology product is expected to achieve mass production in the first half of 2023.
With the continuous advancement of the marketization process, it is expected that the amount of manganese used in lithium batteries will increase by more than 10 times between 2021 and 2035, and there is a structural shortage of manganese raw materials for batteries.
Related companies with new battery technology reserves such as lithium manganese iron phosphate and battery-grade manganese resources may have more advantages in future industrial competition.
