Approach for a Systematic Derivation of Risks During Disassembly of Traction Batteries

As a delayed consequence of the upswing in electro mobility the recycling industry faces an increasing volume of batteries from electric vehicles that have reached the end of their service life. Returned batteries are either thermally recycled or disassembled in order to recycle the component material or to prepare individual components for reuse in second life applications. Both manual and automated dismantling of high-voltage batteries is associated with risks that have so far been little studied. The literature review, which was carried out at the beginning of the investigations, shows that the dismantling process with regard to potential risks has so far only been considered selectively. Moreover, the few risks mentioned are mostly formulated globally and can only rarely be assigned to concrete dismantling steps. This paper presents an approach to systematically identify risks in battery disassembly. Thereby it focuses the automated disassembly process of high-voltage lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles up to the recovery of individual battery modules. Using the derived methodological approach the paper shows the potential dangers of the individual dismantling steps chronologically, considering the disassembly process of various batteries. The underlying causes are named and appropriate preventive measures are presented. Using the respective probability of occurrence and the corresponding severity of damage as evaluation criteria, the risk of the identified hazards is finally assessed in three stages.