A review on end-of-use management of spent lithium-ion batteries from sustainability perspective

Rapid growth of electric vehicles market advances the mass production of lithium-ion batteries. End-of-life lithium-ion battery management can enhance sustainable development, following the principles of triple bottom line and circular economy. From a life cycle perspective, battery second use and material recovery are two major end-of-life options to handle spent batteries. As an emerging business, battery second use suffers from technology immaturity and has room for multiple types of collaboration benefiting cross-sector stakeholders. On the other hand, existing recycling technologies cannot significantly offset the environmental impact caused by battery manufacturing. To address these concerns and support policy making, the review covered the technical pathways to present a full view of end-of-life battery recovery, identified the key bottlenecks in different dimensions, discussed the strategies for specific applications and even business model innovations. Industrial practice and pilot projects associated with the two end-of-life options are summarized. In the end, future research suggestions are provided to facilitate the establishment of a sustainable circular battery recycling system.

Second Use Value of China’s New Energy Vehicle Battery: A View Based on Multi-Scenario Simulation

Nowadays, many countries are actively seeking ways to solve the energy crisis and environmental pollution. New Energy Vehicle (NEV) has become an important way to solve these problems. With the rapid development of NEV, its batteries need to be replaced with new batteries after 5–8 years. Therefore, whether the second use of NEV’s battery has commercial or social value becomes a research hotspot. The innovation of this paper is to use the cost-benefit method to determine the value influencing factors of NEV’s battery second use, and use system dynamics to perform scenario simulation analysis. The methods used in this paper are the cost-benefit method and system dynamics method. Firstly, this paper systematically analyzes the cost and benefit factors that affect the second use value of China’s NEV batteries and uses system dynamics to establish the relationship and value model among various factors. Then, this paper compares the value of battery energy storage between old batteries and new batteries. According to the cost-income factor analysis, this paper eventually selects specific factors and uses VENSIM software to carry out the multi-scenario simulation. The results show that NEV’s battery second use has commercial and social value compared to new battery energy storage. Moreover, battery cost, government subsidies, and electricity prices are three important factors that affect the second use value of China’s NEV battery. Changing the government’s cash subsidy methods, such as providing free batteries or combining new energy to reduce on-grid tariffs, will help increase the second use value of the NEV battery. In the future, the second use value of China’s NEV battery industry will be more significant, with the update of the technology, the surge in the number of NEV’s used batteries, and government support.