Battery Production and Recycling Issues

Most lithium is produced overseas by concentrating brine-containing lithium salts. Metallic lithium is not required for battery production, so production is not energy intensive.

Successful development of commercial plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) will require improved battery performance and reduced cost. Most experts agree that the new batteries will use novel chemistries that are under development by industry and national laboratories. Some of the materials in the advanced batteries may be domestic, but others may need to be imported. The US does not want to trade dependence on foreign oil for dependence on imported battery materials. In addition, the resource base for some battery materials could be strained by mass market demand, leading to significant price increases. Both imported sources and potentially scarce supplies could influence our choice of battery materials to use and would also provide impetus to initiate battery recycling quickly. Argonne is evaluating potential material supply issues for several promising lithium-ion battery chemistries.

There may be environmental issues involved in production or recycling of battery materials, for instance SO₂ emissions from primary nickel production. Similarly, production of the materials or the batteries may be energy intensive; our analysis will quantify impacts from material production. Since recycling generally has lower impacts than primary production, these factors also argue strongly for recycling.

Batteries that are no longer up to performance specs for cars could be reused in other markets and probably still be suitable for recycling after reuse. Argonne is investigating this possibility. Current recycling processes depend on cobalt recovery for economic feasibility, but future automotive batteries are likely to use little or no cobalt. New and improved processes could be developed to recover additional materials economically from cell chemistries that are currently being tested. The objective would be to reuse these materials in batteries. There may also be safety issues to address in the areas of battery production, testing, transport, use, or recycling. Argonne will also try to understand the material or design properties that cause fire danger, so it can be reduced or eliminated. In this way, battery development can be accomplished without encountering any unforeseen difficulties.

More

• Lithium-Ion Batteries: Possible Materials Issues (806kB PDF)
• Lithium-Ion Batteries: Possible Material Demand Issues (handout; 577kB PDF)

August 2009