Towards a sustainable battery manufacturing modelling platform

Lithium-ion batteries are essential for consumer electronics, stationary storage systems and especially electromobility but are expensive and have a substantial environmental footprint. To improve the sustainability of batteries, innovative battery design and production processes across the entire value chain are currently under development. Life cycle assessment (LCA) and cost assessments can help support such developments by providing direct feedback and optimise technical decisions from a sustainability point of view. Lithium-ion batteries and their production however is complex and characterised by many technical parameters that influence the sustainability. Current sustainability assessment models lack the engineering refinement to capture these parameters and simulate battery manufacturing processes that are useful for technical decisions making. Therefore, to support the ongoing and growing battery technology developments in research and industry, new sustainability assessment to capture such technical details are needed.
In this work, a new Python-based modelling platform for environmental and techno-economic assessments of batteries is presented. The platform implements detailed product and process models used to simulate the manufacturing energy and material flows, and links them to LCA and cost assessment models. By modelling battery and machine-specific parameters, complex and extensive analysis of novel battery technologies can be explored. Furthermore, due to its flexible and modular structure, models of new battery technologies, machines and process routes can be easily integrated in the framework. In this work, the overall logic and design of the platform, the different models and their linkages are introduced. The capabilities of the platform are illustrated by means of a case study of a conventional lithium-ion cell production route versus a novel semi-solid lithium-ion cell production concept. This work concludes by highlighting how such a modelling platform can enhance the engineering relevance of IE/LCA/sustainability assessments.