As a solvent for battery cathode materials, what is the market status of NMP?

Definition and use of NMPN-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) plays a very important role in the development of chemical industry, new material technology industry, semico...

Aug 01,2023 | Gwendolyn

Definition and use of NMP

N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) plays a very important role in the development of chemical industry, new material technology industry, semiconductor company industry, and environmental protection education. It is a very important chemical industrial product and is mostly used as a cleaning agent 1 methyl 2 pyrrolidone. Solvents, additives, used in the production of antifreeze, herbicides, and polymer composite materials.

Especially in the lithium battery industry, NMP is mainly used in the coating of positive electrodes, the dissolution of positive electrode materials nmp, PVDF binders and other processes, and the new liquid can be reused through distillation.

The brief structure of lithium batteries and NMP have many application scenarios in lithium batteries. The carbon nanotube slurry is also made of NMP, so we won’t discuss it in depth here.

NMP market size

It can be seen that the market size of NMP in my country has continued to expand in recent years, with a compound annual growth rate of more than 18% . This is due to the rapid development of new energy vehicles and the rising demand in the lithium-ion battery industry, and lithium-ion solvents are growing fastest as a downstream application of NMP. According to industrial data, 1 gigawatt-hour power battery will use about 1,500 tons of nmp solvent. It is conceivable that the market size of NMP is promising.

In actual production, most of the NMP will be recycled, which saves costs on the one hand and reduces the impact on the environment on the other hand. Since 2021, the NMP restoration and rectification market has experienced explosive growth. According to the production trend of power batteries in 2022, it is estimated that the annual recycling and rectification capacity is expected to exceed 1 million tons.

Competition and Price Trends

At present, the entry threshold for the development of NMP's high-end technology field is relatively high. At present, the market share of Chinese foreign-funded enterprise brands is larger, so the prospect of my country's import substitution is very broad. The leading international manufacturers of NMP mainly include Germany, the United States, Japan, Belgium and so on.

The low-end market competition in the NMP industry is becoming increasingly fierce. Due to the continuous prosperity of the lithium battery industry downstream of the NMP industry, major manufacturers continue to launch new projects, which is also a way for new materials and new chemical listed companies to increase their valuations with the help of electronic chemical concepts.

The problem of new production capacity in the past two years and the expected new production capacity in China in the next few years are very large, and the price of NMP seems to have ushered in a cyclical decline.

It can be seen from the price of NMP that the price of NMP has dropped significantly in the past year. Nearly a quarter of the NMP price movement, it can also be seen that the price decline is more obvious and the decline is larger.

At present, the main business of large domestic enterprises is the products of NMP and upstream and downstream industrial chains, and there are many public materials, which are one of the research materials that are relatively easy to obtain in new materials.

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