Carbon Footprint of Spent Ternary Lithium-Ion Battery Waste Recycling

Abstract

Road transport is the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions in China's transportation field. As an important means to achieve the "double carbon" goal in the transportation field, the new energy automobile industry will face a large number of power battery scrapping in the future. In order to quantitatively assess the carbon emission reduction benefits generated by the spent ternary lithium-ion battery waste recycling industry, the carbon footprint accounting model of spent ternary lithium-ion battery waste recycling and utilization was constructed from the life cycle perspective. By optimizing the power structure and transportation structure, the carbon emission reduction potential of spent ternary lithium-ion battery waste recycling was predicted and evaluated. In addition, the uncertainty analysis was conducted using the propagation of uncertainty equation to ensure the reliability and effectiveness of the carbon footprint results. The results showed that the current carbon footprint of Chinese enterprises using wet technology to recover 1 kg waste lithium batteries was -2 760.90 g (directional recycling process) and -3 752.78 g (recycling process), and the uncertainty of the carbon footprint was 16 % (directional recycling process) and 15 % (recycling process), respectively. From the analysis of carbon emission contribution, the regenerated product stage was the primary source of carbon reduction in the wet recycling and utilization of waste ternary lithium batteries, whereas the battery acquisition, disassembly, and end treatment stages were the main sources of carbon increase. Compared to optimizing the transportation structure, optimizing the power structure could effectively achieve greater carbon emission reduction potential. Under the collaborative optimization scenario, compared to that before optimization, 14 %-19 % carbon emission reduction could be achieved. Compared with native products, the directional circulation process and recycling process could achieve 9 % and 11 % emission reduction potential, respectively.