Life Cycle Assessment of Hydrometallurgical Recycling for Cathode Active Materials
Life Cycle Assessment of Hydrometallurgical Recycling for Cathode Active Materials
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As battery usage keeps growing due to a boom in the electric vehicles market, battery recycling has become a crucial issue. Cathode active material is the most valuable component of the battery and attracts researchers’ attention. Much research has been focused on finding the optimal condition of a certain hydrometallurgical recycling process for cathode active material. However, there is no comprehensive comparison between different hydrometallurgical recycling processes. In this research, life cycle assessment is adopted to evaluate the environmental concerns, which is a major reason for using batteries and recycling batteries, of different hydrometallurgical recycling processes for three widely used cathode active materials: NMC, LFP, and LCO. The environmental impact of each process is assessed based on the ReCiPe method using standardized processes and unified reactors. As a result, the most effective hydrometallurgical recycling processes for NMC, LFP, and LCO have been found. Moreover, the most effective recycling processes lower the environmental impact by over 50% compared to the average of those evaluated.
As battery usage keeps growing due to a boom in the electric vehicles market, battery recycling has become a crucial issue. Cathode active material is the most valuable component of the battery and attracts researchers’ attention. Much research has been focused on finding the optimal condition of a certain hydrometallurgical recycling process for cathode active material. However, there is no comprehensive comparison between different hydrometallurgical recycling processes. In this research, life cycle assessment is adopted to evaluate the environmental concerns, which is a major reason for using batteries and recycling batteries, of different hydrometallurgical recycling processes for three widely used cathode active materials: NMC, LFP, and LCO. The environmental impact of each process is assessed based on the ReCiPe method using standardized processes and unified reactors. As a result, the most effective hydrometallurgical recycling processes for NMC, LFP, and LCO have been found. Moreover, the most effective recycling processes lower the environmental impact by over 50% compared to the average of those evaluated.
Published 1 paper as the 1st author on Journal of Power Sources
Graphical abstract
(a) Flowchart of grave-to-gate process for cathode active material recycling. (b) Market share of different cathode active materials.
NMC recycling processes (a) Recycling process option 1. (b) Recycling process option 2. (c) Recycling process option 3. (d) Recycling process option 4.
LFP recycling processes (a) Recycling process option 5. (b) Recycling process option 6.
LCO recycling processes (a) Recycling process option 7. (b) Recycling process option 8. (c) Recycling process option 9. (d) Recycling process option 10.
Comparison of different hydrometallurgical recycling processes for (a) NMC. (b) LFP. (c) LCO. (d) Close-loop comparison of NMC, LFP, and LCO.
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