Feasibility assessment of remanufacturing, repurposing, and recycling of end of vehicle application lithium-ion batteries

Purpose: Lithium-ion batteries that are commonly used in electric vehicles and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles cannot be simply discarded at the end of vehicle application due to the materials of which they are composed. In addition the US Department of Energy has estimated that the cost per kWh of new lithium-ion batteries for vehicle applications is four times too high, creating an economic barrier to the widespread commercialization of plug-in electric vehicles. (USDOE 2014). Thus, reducing this cost by extending the application life of these batteries appears to be necessary. Even with an extension of application life, all batteries will eventually fail to hold a charge and thus become unusable. Thus environmentally safe disposition must be accomplished. Addressing these cost and environmental issues can be accomplished by remanufacturing end of vehicle life lithium ion batteries for return to vehicle applications as well as repurposing them for stationary applications such as energy storage systems supporting the electric grid. In addition, environmental safe, "green" disposal processes are required that include disassembly of batteries into component materials for recycling. The hypotheses that end of vehicle application remanufacturing, repurposing, and recycling are each economic are examined. This assessment includes a forecast of the number of such batteries to ensure sufficient volume for conducting these activities. Design/methodology/approach: The hypotheses that end of vehicle application remanufacturing, repurposing, and recycling are economic are addressed using cost-benefit analysis applied independently to each. Uncertainty is associated with all future costs and benefits. Data from a variety of sources are combined and reasonable assumptions are made. The robustness of the results is confirmed by sensitivity analysis regarding each key parameter. Determining that a sufficient volume of end of vehicle application lithium-ion batteries will exist to support remanufacturing, repurposing, and recycling involves estimating a lower bound for the number of such batteries. Based on a variety of forecasts for electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle production, a distribution of life for use in a vehicle, and the percent recoverable for further use, three projections of the number of end of vehicle applications batteries for the time period 2010 to 2050 are developed. The lower bound is then the minimum of these three forecasts. Mult