Evaluating Remanufacturing Lithium-Ion Batteries

Waste management of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) after retirement is worrying as the wide application of electric vehicles. More and more attention has been paid to the remanufacturing of LIBs, because it can reduce the environmental burden of spent LIBs and the risk of raw materials supply when remanufacturing LIBs. This paper use the life cycle assessement to evaluate the environmental impacts and employ the process-based cost model to calculate the economic influence. Results show that remanufacturing NCM₁₁₁ battery with pyrometallurgical recycling method could decrease the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission by 4.76% and reduce costs by 8.11%. In addition, this study uses sensitivity analysis method to analyze the influence of battery types. The cost of remanufacturing NCM₈₁₁ is the least among three types of LIBs, which costs 19.72 dollars per cell. Remanufacturing NCM₆₂₂ emits the most GHG among three types of LIBs, which emits 11,009.75 g GHG per cell. In a word, remanufacturing LIBs is environmentally-friendly and commercially-profitable.