Scale-Up of Pilot Line Battery Cell Manufacturing Life Cycle Inventory Models for Life Cycle Assessment

Abstract

Even though the gate-to-gate production of lithium based battery cells is one of the main contributors to the environmental impacts of electric vehicles, primary data required for the estimation of environmental impacts of large-scale production of battery cells remains scarce. While Life Cycle Assessment for battery cells produced in research pilot lines can increase the understanding of related environmental impacts, the data is difficult to scale up to large-scale production systems. This paper presents a scale up methodology along with a Life Cycle Inventory and Life Cycle Assessment for battery cells manufactured in the Battery LabFactory Braunschweig (BLB). CO2-eq emissions of a single battery cell produced in a pilot line can be tenfold of comparable industrial cells. Material and energy efficiency, dry room sizing, lacking systemic efficiencies and unoptimized product design are the main reasons for this difference in the foreground system. Based on two scenarios, the paper elaborates how Life Cycle Inventories can be up-scaled from a pilot scale so that they can be used to estimate large-scale production environmental impacts.