Lithium ion car batteries: Present analysis and future predictions

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) are spreading rapidly and many counties are promoting hybrid and fully EVs through legislation. Therefore, an increasing amount of lithium ion batteries will reach the end of their usable life and will require effective and sustainable end-of-life management plan which include landfill disposal or incineration. The current research focuses on more sustainable methods such as remanufacturing, reuse and recycling in order to prepare for future battery compositions and provide insights to the need recycling methods to be developed to handle large amounts of batteries sustainably in the near future. The two most prominent material recovery techniques are hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy which are explored and assessed on their relative effectiveness, sustainability, and feasibility. Hydrometallurgy is a superior recycling method due to high material recovery and purity, very low emissions, high prevalence of chemical reuse and implementation of environmentally sustainable compounds. Expanding recycling technologies globally should take the research and technologies pioneered by Umicore to establish a sustainable recycling program for end-of-life EVs batteries. Emerging battery technology of Telsa show the most effective designs for high performance batteries includes the use of silicon which is expected to increase capacity of batteries in the future.

Towards a More Sustainable Lithium‐Ion Battery Future: Recycling LIBs from Electric Vehicles

“…NCA batteries have only been recently commercialised. Whilst LFPs have been used in e‐buses for a while now, they have not been adopted in EVs till recently, so there are fewer studies focusing on their recycling [21] . The studies that have been performed lack some of the sensitivity analysis that the processes of more established battery types have.…”

“…There is no single standout cathode composition – it largely depends on the application. NMC and NCA are the most common chemistries in the EV market [21] . NMC cathodes with different Ni−Mn‐Co compositions have been around for nearly 20 years now, with several key publications and patents published in the mid‐2000s [22] .…”

Eco-Efficiency Assessment of the Application of Large-Scale Rechargeable Batteries in a Coal-Fired Power Plant

“…Therefore, the recovery of metal from the battery is small and is primarily limited to iron and copper, and sometimes also cobalt and nickel due to their price [32]. The European Union has now established a new class of hazardous waste for LiB and new regulations related to recycling [33], which should improve the situation in the future. The Canadian and USA regulations still allow battery storage in landfills.…”

Full recycling of spent lithium ion batteries with production of core-shell nanowires//exfoliated graphite asymmetric supercapacitor

“…On the other hand, while hydrometallurgical processes have lower costs and emissions than pyrometallurgical ones, the associated complex chemistry of the electrodic materials makes it challenging the separation of the various materials. Hydrometallurgical processes can be implemented ensuring a complete recovery of all components of the different electrodic materials into high purity separate streams (Co, Ni salts) [3]. A major bottleneck hindering the economic and environmental sustainability of hydrometallurgical processes is represented by the numerous and costly operations performed to separate the different electrode materials in order to obtain high purity Co, Ni products.…”