Prediction of Battery Return Volumes for 3R: Remanufacturing, Reuse, and Recycling

Abstract

Life cycle strategies for traction batteries, such as remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling of retired automotive lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), have received growing attention, as large volumes of LIBs will retire in the near future and the demand for LIBs continues to grow. At the same time, the relevance of the sustainability of a battery system over its entire life cycle is increasing as factors such as the EU Battery Regulation provide greater market and product transparency. As a result, research and industry require forecasts in order to assess the future market situation and to make well-founded decisions. Therefore, this paper provides forecasts of the return volumes of battery systems from BEVs and PHEVs up to 2035. Additionally, a representative European battery pack for PHEVs and BEVs was evaluated for each year since 2013, based on the ten vehicles with the largest market share in each year until 2021. In addition, the battery return streams are divided into three different 3R strategies based on expert interviews in order to evaluate the upcoming workload in these areas. The term “3R” refers to the sum of the currently existing pathways around reuse, remanufacturing, and recycling. In 2030, about 38.8 GWh will return and enter the recycling process annually. For battery reuse, about 13 GWh will return every year from 2030 onwards, ready to be used in stationary storage for energy transition. Compared to this, battery remanufacturing is expected to be supplied with a slightly lower volume of approximately 11 GWh per year.

Identification and Mitigation of Predominant Challenges in the Utilization of Aged Traction Batteries within Stationary Second-Life Scenarios

“…The background is that about 1.3 GWh of battery systems are expected to be available for a second life in Europe in 2025. In 2030, the expected rededication volume will already increase to 13 GWh in Europe [40]. In order to ensure that this exponential increase in battery return volumes can also be continuously transferred to stationary repurposing scenarios in the long term, an application with sufficient market development is required, i.e., one that is attractive and relevant in the long term.…”

“…However, since these fault mechanisms occur inside the battery cell, the evaluation of pack or module level is challenging. Nevertheless, very recent research exists, such as by Kampker et al [40], Zhao et al [42], or Xing [43], using statistical models to study battery health and predict failure in different circumstances. For this purpose, the Weibull distribution as well as principal component analysis and improved Gaussian process regression are used.…”

Understanding the Economics of Aged Traction Batteries: Market Value and Dynamics

“…In 2023, this platform actively traded over 280 MWh of SLBs in the European market. This corresponds to about 5600 battery systems when considering an average SLB capacity of about 50 kWh [3] (p. 12). For the representative SLB volume offered on the an average SLB price of about 90 USD/kWh for NMC622 battery packs was calculated.…”

“…The use of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) in automotives and other applications such as stationary energy storage is steadily increasing [1,2]. An annual return volume of about 63 GWh of LIBs is expected to be available for recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing in 2030 [3]. With the increasing relevance of sustainability and rising return volumes in the future, a functioning circular economy for batteries is required.…”

“…One of these factors is the value correlation between the used car market, with its electric vehicles (EVs) and the pricing of used batteries. The used EV market is an enormous market and contains a large volume of used LIBs as part of used EVs [3]. This paper uses the US used car market as an example due to its size of nearly 40 million vehicles traded in 2022 and the good availability of data on price developments [8].…”