Impact of Recycling on Cradle-to-Gate Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Automotive Lithium-Ion Batteries

This paper addresses the environmental burdens (energy consumption and air emissions, including greenhouse gases, GHGs) of the material production, assembly, and recycling of automotive lithium-ion batteries in hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and battery electric vehicles (BEV) that use Li...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & technology 2012-11, Vol.46 (22), p.12704-12710
Main Authors: Dunn, Jennifer B, Gaines, Linda, Sullivan, John, Wang, Michael Q
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air Pollutants - analysis
Air pollution caused by fuel industries
Aluminum
Applied sciences
Automobiles
Batteries
Direct energy conversion and energy accumulation
Electric Power Supplies
Electrical engineering. Electrical power engineering
Electrical power engineering
Electrochemical conversion: primary and secondary batteries, fuel cells
Emissions
Energy
Energy consumption
Energy. Thermal use of fuels
Environmental impact
Environmental Monitoring
Exact sciences and technology
Gases - analysis
Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse gases
Lithium
Lithium - chemistry
Manganese - chemistry
Metering. Control
Models, Theoretical
Oxides - chemistry
Recycling
Recycling - methods
Sensitivity and Specificity
United States
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Summary:This paper addresses the environmental burdens (energy consumption and air emissions, including greenhouse gases, GHGs) of the material production, assembly, and recycling of automotive lithium-ion batteries in hybrid electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and battery electric vehicles (BEV) that use LiMn2O4 cathode material. In this analysis, we calculated the energy consumed and air emissions generated when recovering LiMn2O4, aluminum, and copper in three recycling processes (hydrometallurgical, intermediate physical, and direct physical recycling) and examined the effect(s) of closed-loop recycling on environmental impacts of battery production. We aimed to develop a U.S.-specific analysis of lithium-ion battery production and in particular sought to resolve literature discrepancies concerning energy consumed during battery assembly. Our analysis takes a process-level (versus a top-down) approach. For a battery used in a BEV, we estimated cradle-to-gate energy and GHG emissions of 75 MJ/kg battery and 5.1 kg CO2e/kg battery, respectively. Battery assembly consumes only 6% of this total energy. These results are significantly less than reported in studies that take a top-down approach. We further estimate that direct physical recycling of LiMn2O4, aluminum, and copper in a closed-loop scenario can reduce energy consumption during material production by up to 48%.
ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851
DOI:10.1021/es302420z