Sustainability in New Battery Technology Developments

The definition of sustainability is such that it can mean many things to different people. In this work we discuss the aspects of sustainability which relate to new battery technologies and developments. We examine the impact of materials, energy, and the environment in achieving a comprehensive circular supply chain for battery materials. This includes considering the importance and scarcity of materials, the manufacturing process for both materials and batteries, their lifespan, and the potential for recycling and reusing materials at the end of their life cycle.<br/><br/>Circular Materials choices and supply are influenced mainly currently by cost, however with different minerals and materials being on different global critical materials lists, alternatives may be needed. lithium, graphite, phosphate, silicon and cobalt are all on the EU and the UK critical materials lists, indicating that there is a supply chain risk and that the materials are of high economic importance. Using the 4 R’s of sustainability, reduce, reuse, recover and recycling we can start to reduce our reliance on these materials. In this way sodium-ion batteries are being considered as an alternative, where substitution for lithium, cobalt and graphite for sodium, iron and hard carbon can be achieved. This leads to significantly lower cost materials, however when initial LCA’s are performed on these batteries (per kWh) the embedded carbon is significantly higher. Other factors of sustainability must be taken into consideration; recyclability and time in use.<br/>In this work we discuss some of the design for disassembly aspects for sodium-ion and lithium-ion batteries. Recycling routes are discussed and the materials recovery and the reuse cases for these materials. Often the recovery rates are influenced by the design of the cells and the electrodes, and we propose routes for electrode manufacturing, compositions and design considerations to maximise the performance and the recovery rates of those materials.