Literature Review, Recycling of Lithium-Ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles, Part II: Environmental and Economic Perspective

Abstract

Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are crucial for consumer electronics, complex energy storage systems, space applications, and the automotive industry. The increasing requirements for decarbonization and CO2 emissions reduction affect the composition of new production. Thus, the entire automotive sector experiences its turning point; the production capacities of new internal combustion engine vehicles are limited, and the demand for electric vehicles (EVs) has continuously increased over the past years. The growing number of new EVs leads to an increasing amount of automotive waste, namely spent LIBs. Recycling appears to be the most suitable solution for lowering EV prices and reducing environmental impacts; however, it is still not a well-established process. This work is the second part of the review collection based on the performed literature survey, where more than 250 publications about “Recycling of Lithium-ion Batteries from Electric Vehicles” were divided into five sections: Recycling Processes, Battery Composition, Environmental Impact, Economic Evaluation, and Recycling and Rest. This paper reviews and summarizes 162 publications dedicated to recycling procedures and their environmental or economic perspective. Both reviews cover the techno-environmental economic impacts of recycling spent LIBs from EVs published until 2021.

The Lithium-Ion Battery Recycling Process from a Circular Economy Perspective—A Review and Future Directions

“…Recycling products produced in this process are aluminum, iron, aluminum/copper mixture, and active mass. The latter is not contaminated, allowing a hydrometallurgical treatment process to recover nickel, cobalt, copper, and lithium [53].…”

Remanufacturing transparent conductive oxide electrodes using ultrafast on-demand laser fabrication

“…For a long time, several attempts have been made to build a sustainable society in response to the global resource depletion problem; these attempts have been focused on a resource recycling model based on the 3R concept of ''Recycle, Reduce, and Reuse''. [1][2][3][4] However, to build a truly sustainable society, it must be compatible with economic growth. Therefore, a growth model has been recently constructed based on the concept of circular economy along with a resource circulation model.…”

Direct Recycling Technology for Spent Lithium-Ion Batteries: Limitations of Current Implementation

“…Therefore, there is a high demand for alternative recycling technologies that can directly reuse degraded energy storage materials for battery manufacturing from an economically and environmentally sustainable perspective. The most promising of them is direct recycling technology [7,20,21].…”

“…Due to the inherent nature of hydrometallurgical processing, this method requires more water than other techniques. Thus, optimized approaches that minimize water usage can yield significant additional benefits for this recycling method [20].…”

“…Despite the advantages of pyrometallurgy, which include process simplicity and speed compared to multi-step chemical leaching processes that span several hours, the energy consumption during the recovery phase is notably high due to the requirement of operating at high temperatures [20]. Moreover, the process leads to significant emission production.…”