Sustainability of electrode scrap recycling - Quantifying the environmental benefit of direct recycling routes for battery production scrap

Production scrap represents a significant proportion of the waste streams generated in the battery sector. Typical waste streams in lithium-ion battery production are defective electrodes and defective battery cells. Different recycling routes can be used to recover electrode materials from electrode production scrap. In most cases, production scrap is processed via conventional recycling routes, although innovative efficient electrode-specific Direct Recycling processes could also be used. In this paper, three innovative Direct Recycling routes are analysed, each of which delaminates anodes and cathodes separately and recirculates the material for reuse. In order to compare the environmental impacts of different Direct Recycling routes, a life cycle assessment is used to quantify the environmental impacts based on the energy and material requirements. These routes are compared with each other on lab scale, taking into account different methods for quantifying the energy flows. The routes are evaluated on an industrial scale in comparison to the LithoRec recycling process, which represents a low temperature, state-of-the-art conventional route. The results show that the quantification method for energy demand has a significant impact on the evaluation of the Direct Recycling routes when the quantification is done based on laboratory/pilot scale equipment. However, the comparison with the LithoRec process on an industrial scale shows that the Direct Recycling routes significantly decrease environmental impacts, which is why they offer high potential for reducing environmental impacts regardless of the quantification method.