Recycling of lithium-ion batteries using pyrometallurgical technologies: a life cycle assessment
Abstract
The current electric vehicle revolution relies on Lithium-Ion Batteries (LIBs) for which a set of particular materials are needed. On the other hand, the growing demand for EVs will further result in a huge number of LIBs end up at their end-of-life (EoL) and require appropriate recycling. Recycling could be a promising practice to supply a part of raw materials needed for LIBs and avoid environmental impacts of their disposal. Among different recycling processes available for LIBs, pyrometallurgical processes are used in the market. However, very little is known about their environmental and energy impacts. In the current research, global warming impacts (GWP) of a commercial pyrometallurgical recycling process, i.e. Ultra-High Temperature (UHT) furnace (Sc-3), is calculated and compared with a novel and emerging battery recycling technology, called as Direct Current (DC) plasma smelting technology (Sc-1). Since the impact of pre-treatment on LIB recycling is a current debate in academia, this study also considers the impact of a series of pre-treatment processes on batteries prior to the DC plasma furnace (Sc-2). The LCA performed in this study considered the recycling in both ‘open-loop’ and ‘closed-loop’ recycling occasions. The results showed that shifting from the current pyrometallurgical technologies toward the novel DC plasma technology could effectively reduce the GWP of the recycling process by up to a factor of 5 (when employing pre-treatment, as is the case with Sc-2). This could be very interesting for the current pyrometallurgical approaches in the recycling of LIBs and also for the other approaches that aim to employ a pre-treatment stage in the recycling.
Author(s)
| Name |
Affiliation |
|
Mohammad Ali Rajaeifar
|
Newcastle University |
|
Oliver Heidrich
|
School of Engineering; Newcastle University |
|
Marco Raugei |
School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, Oxford Brookes University, UK |
|
Bernhard Steubing |
Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML), Leiden University, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC, Leiden, the Netherlands |
|
Anthony Hartwell |
School of Metallurgy and Materials, Birmingham University, Birmingham, B15 2SE, UK |
|
Paul Anderson |
chool of Chemistry, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, B15 2TT |
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