Recyclability Assessment and Design for Recycling Recommendations of End-of-Life NMC811 Lithium -Ion Batteries

This case study provides design for recycling (DfR) recommendations for NMC811 batteries, leveraging a detailed quantitative model of a recycling process optimized during the HydroLiBRec Research project. The adopted methodology integrated comprehensive empirical and analytical measurements to construct an accurate thermodynamic simulation of material and substance flow throughout the entire recycling process. This approach involved stages of manual dismantling, followed by hydro-mechanical, thermal treatment and hydrometallurgical processing of the end-of-life (EoL) NMC811 battery cells. Thermodynamic simulations were conducted using FactSage™ version 8.2 and HSC Chemistry 10 version 10.3.7.1 software to model the recovery of lithium present in the black mass via metallurgical processing methods. The results provided a detailed breakdown of the material composition post-dismantling, revealing that separated cells containing the active NMC811 material constituted 63.7% of the total weight. The study computes the recyclability index and quantify the recovery rates of individual elements, highlighting a recovery rate of 59.7% for lithium and an overall recycling index of 59.4%. The formatted data clearly supported material flow analysis and a product-centric approaches, which are crucial for optimizing DfR strategies and improving overall recycling efficiency. Recommendations included optimizing the dismantling process to achieve a 19% reduction in environmental impacts, such as Global Warming Potential (GWP), and avoiding the use of materials that would be lost in the recycling route. Overall, the measures are projected to increase the recycling index to 90%, thereby significantly improving the overall sustainability of the recycling process for NMC811 batteries. Moreover, a key finding highlighted the necessity of aligning product design with recycling process design in order to maximize recovery while minimizing impacts and losses.