Recycling of lithium-ion batteries: Recent advances and perspectives

Recycling End-of-Life Electric Vehicle Lithium-Ion Batteries

http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/231220/1/1-s2.0-S0301479720304345-main.pdf

Lithium-ion batteries towards circular economy: A literature review of opportunities and issues of recycling treatments.

Even with a long lifetime of 25–30 years of green energy production, end-of-life treatment of solar photovoltaic modules can negatively impact the environment if not handled properly. This is particularly urgent when the use of photovoltaics has grown at an unprecedented rate, generating clean energy all over the world. Therefore, it is essential to develop commercially viable end-of-life recycling technologies to guarantee a sustainable future for the photovoltaic technology. Silicon photovoltaic modules, the most popular photovoltaic technology, have been shown to be economically unattractive for recycling - the materials are mixed and difficult to separate, and have low value, so that the cost of recycling is hardly recovered. In this paper, we review the state-of-art recycling technology and associate it with a quantitative economic assessment to breakdown the cost structure and better understand the presented economic barrier. The techno-economic review allows us to identify essential framework and technology changes required to overcome the current barrier to implementing commercial-scale recycling. (i) The authority may impose price signal to impress direct landfill of end-of-life modules while proactively establish an effective collection network. (ii) The local recyclers may aim at value recovery as a step beyond mass recovery, especially targeting at recovery of intact silicon wafers and silver to guarantee the recycling revenue. Meanwhile, efforts should be put on reducing the recycling processing cost. (iii) Photovoltaic module manufacturers may take end-of-life responsibilities and up-design the product to facilitate end-of-life recycling, which includes features for simple disassembly, recycling, and reducing or eliminating the use of toxic components.

Samuel D. Widijatmoko

Papers

An investigation of the current status of recycling spent lithium-ion batteries from consumer electronics in China

A methodology to liberate critical metals in waste solar panel