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Life cycle environmental impacts of the NMC-SiNW lithium ion battery pack: abiotic depletion potential (ADP), global warming potential (GWP), acidi fi cation potential (AP), eutrophication potential (EP), ozone depletion potential (ODP), photochemical oxidation potential (POP), ecological toxicity potential (ETP), and human toxicity potential (HTP). The absolute values of the impacts are provided in Tables S24 and S25 in the SI.
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While silicon nanowires (SiNW) have been widely studied as an ideal material for developing high capacity lithium ion batteries (LIBs) for electric vehicles (EVs), little is known about the environmental impacts of such a new EV battery pack during its whole life cycle. This paper reports a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a high capacity LIB pack us...
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... and deposition ( ∼ 1100 ° C). 46,47 When compared, other LIB components including cathode, separator, electrolyte, and casing together consume 11.367 MJ/ kg. Assembly of a single punch cell with above-prepared components requires 0.299 MJ/kg only, and battery pack production including stacking LIB cells, winding control wires, and assembling the BMS, cooling system, and battery pack housing consumes a total of 0.412 MJ/kg. These energy data are consistent with the results published in the literature. 27 The energy consumption of the battery pack during its whole life cycle are mainly in the categories of grid electricity supply (25373.5 MJ) for production and battery operations, diesel combustion (107.6 MJ) for transportation and some onsite activities, and thermal energy generated from natural gas combustion (2519.7 MJ) for process heating and treatment. The grid electricity used in this analysis is average U.S. electricity mix with 89.56% of nonrenewable energies. 41 For U.S. grid electricity supply, the average transformation and distribution e ffi ciency is 91.4%. 48 For battery energy analysis in the use phase, 90% of charge/discharge e ffi ciency is used for battery with SiNW anode (a little bit lower than that of conventional battery with graphite anode within 96 − 100% 49 ), 50 and the average electricity required for EV operation is 164.8 Wh/km. 33 The energy consumptions for material recovery at end-of-life stage of the LIB pack are modeled based on real industrial LIB recycling processes by Toxco and Umicore. 51,52 The consumed energy in the life cycle of the battery pack, depending on the fuel types, contributes to emissions such as CO 2 , CH 4 , SO 2 , and NO 2 . In this analysis, eGrid model is used to trace the energy consumed during the whole life cycle of the battery pack to the original fuel types and quantities under U.S. average electricity mix condition, 41 and the retrieved fuel data are then used in the GaBi 6 software for environmental impact assessment. Besides energy consumption, the other major part of LCI data is the inputs and outputs of various types of materials and emissions during the whole life cycle of the LIB pack. The material compositions of the battery pack using SiNW and carbon black anodes are shown in Table S1 and S2, respectively, in the SI. A detailed material fl ow structure for the LIB pack production is illustrated in SI Figure S1. Detailed material inputs and outputs related to the production of each battery component and major intermediate materials used in the battery production are shown from SI Tables S4 − S22. The industrial production of the SiNW is modeled based on a scale- up analysis of our lab experimentation in which 80 mg of SiNWs is obtained from metal-assisted chemical etching of 400 mg of silicon powder. For a conservative analysis, the lab-scale data on SiNW synthesis are linearly scaled up to the scale of producing 1 kg of SiNWs, as shown in SI Table S10. Another major source of the environmental impacts from the LIB pack using SiNW anode is the nanowastes and nanoparticle emissions generated from the SiNW synthesis process. Although current environmental impact assessment methods such as GaBi do not include such nanowastes and emissions and accordingly are not able to assess their potential impacts, inclusion of the nanowastes data and information in the life cycle inventory could support future research on development of environmental impact assessment methods for nanowastes, or provide decision support for reducing the quantity of nanowastes during the scale-up of the technology. Nanowastes are di ff erent from their bulk materials since the toxicity of nanomaterials is linked to their multivariant attributes such as mass, shape, particle size, particle number, and surface charge, etc. 16,53 In this study, the nanowastes from the SiNW synthesis process have no surface charge and hence are characterized on the mass, shape, particle size, and particle number (mass information shown in SI Table S10; shape, material compositions, and size distribution shown in Figure 3; particle size data shown in SI Table S3). The nanowastes are analyzed for both the solid nanowastes and the nanoparticles in the etching solution. Figure 3a is the silicon nanowastes with the reduced Ag catalyst deposited on the silicon surface, after the centrifuging separation from the SiNW product. Figure 3b is the Ag dendrite nanowastes on the surface of the silicon matrix. Figure 3c is the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) characterization of the solid nanowaste compositions which con fi rms the wastes are composed of silicon and silver only. Figure 3d is the Zeta- potential analysis of the nanoparticle size and distribution within the etching solution, with average diameter obtained at 705.8 nm and geometric standard deviation at 1.703. Additional nanoparticle emission data from the SiNW synthesis process are listed in SI Table S3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment. Figure 4 shows the generations of conventional environmental impacts from various life cycle stages of the LIB pack using SiNW anode, as characterized by GaBi impact assessment method. The environmental impacts of SiNW nanowastes and emissions are not included in the impacts as no characterization factors and metrics are available in the conventional impact assessment methods. In current LCA studies of nanoproducts such as nanosilver T-shirt reported by Walser et al., 53 the impacts of nanospeci fi c e ff ects are not included. However, research on incorporating the nanomaterials ’ impacts into LCA is ongoing and may be accomplished in the near future. For example, Eckelman et al. has already developed characterization factors for evaluating the aquatic ecotoxicity of carbon nanotubes after their releases into freshwater. 54 Using the GaBi impact methods, the life cycle environmental impacts of the LIB pack are illustrated in terms of the de fi ned functional unit (i.e., one kilometer of EV driving) in Figure 4. The life cycle impact distributions among the six life cycle phases are expressed by the patterned bars, while the life cycle impact contributions of LIB components are shown by the colored bars which are the total impacts from such upstream stages including material extraction, material processing, component manufacture, and battery assembly. The results show that most of the life cycle impacts are generated in the battery use and material production stages. Battery use stage alone contributes to more than half of the life cycle impacts in categories such as ADP (51%), GWP (56%), AP (52%), EP (51%), POP (54%), and HTP (51%), while most impacts in ODP and EDP categories are generated from material extraction stage (58% and 85%, respectively). These results are in good agreement with the results published in refs 27, 29, and 55. The largest impact from the battery use stage is mainly from the primary energy consumption (2.94 × 10 5 MJ) during the 10-year service life of the EV. The total primary energy consumption in the use stage is about 18 times that of the embedded energy in the battery pack. The results demonstrate that the major opportunity for reducing the life cycle impacts of the battery pack is to use clean energy supply for battery operation, such as solar and wind electricity, which could reduce these environmental impacts signi fi cantly. 56 The SiNW anode as produced with large amount of embedded energy and toxic chemicals, contributes to 15% of GWP, 18% of ADP, 17% of POP, and 10% of HTP, respectively, to each corresponding life cycle impact category of the battery pack. In summary, the battery components (including anode, cathode, electrolyte, separator, cell casing, BMS, cooling system, and pack housing) together take a share of each corresponding impact ranging between 21% (HTP) and 77% (ETP). Absolute values of the impacts from each battery component and individual life cycle stages are presented in SI Tables S24 and S25. As the SiNW based LIBs are supposed to replace conventional graphite based LIBs to extend the driving range of the EVs, here a comparison is conducted between the life cycle impacts of such two battery packs, with the same power output (43.2 KWH). To validate the LCA model we developed for this study, we have benchmarked our LCA results of the conventional battery pack with the published results in literature. 27 As shown in SI Table S26, our LCA results on conventional LIBs are in good agreement with the LCA data in published literature. For instance, our study obtained 2.2 MJ/ km of life cycle energy and 0.155 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP, comparable to 1.97 MJ/km of energy and 0.181 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP in Notter ’ s work, 27 and 0.93 MJ/km of energy and 0.935 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP in Zackrisson ’ s work. 26 The minor di ff erences might be from the data sources in that we used lab-scale manufacturing data and GaBi 6 professional database, while Notter and Zackrisson used Ecoinvent database. Also, the battery cathode material in our study is NMC, but LiMn 2 O 4 is used in Notter ’ s analysis and LiFePO 4 is used in Zackrisson ’ s study. With the validated LCA model, the life cycle impacts of the two battery packs are characterized using GaBi methods and benchmarked among each impact category in Figure 5. The results demonstrate that the compositions of the life cycle impacts from individual life cycle stages of the two battery packs are quite di ff erent. For example, the life cycle impacts of the conventional battery pack using carbon graphite are dominated by the battery use phase which contributes to 78% of ADP, 78% of GWP, 64% of AP, 75% of EP, 80% of POP, and 83% of HTP. Whereas for the battery pack using SiNW anode, the contributions of battery use stage are much lower because of the increased impacts from the battery production. This results from the increased energy storage capacity and the extended driving range of EVs, as well as the reduced mass ...
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... the average transformation and distribution e ffi ciency is 91.4%. 48 For battery energy analysis in the use phase, 90% of charge/discharge e ffi ciency is used for battery with SiNW anode (a little bit lower than that of conventional battery with graphite anode within 96 − 100% 49 ), 50 and the average electricity required for EV operation is 164.8 Wh/km. 33 The energy consumptions for material recovery at end-of-life stage of the LIB pack are modeled based on real industrial LIB recycling processes by Toxco and Umicore. 51,52 The consumed energy in the life cycle of the battery pack, depending on the fuel types, contributes to emissions such as CO 2 , CH 4 , SO 2 , and NO 2 . In this analysis, eGrid model is used to trace the energy consumed during the whole life cycle of the battery pack to the original fuel types and quantities under U.S. average electricity mix condition, 41 and the retrieved fuel data are then used in the GaBi 6 software for environmental impact assessment. Besides energy consumption, the other major part of LCI data is the inputs and outputs of various types of materials and emissions during the whole life cycle of the LIB pack. The material compositions of the battery pack using SiNW and carbon black anodes are shown in Table S1 and S2, respectively, in the SI. A detailed material fl ow structure for the LIB pack production is illustrated in SI Figure S1. Detailed material inputs and outputs related to the production of each battery component and major intermediate materials used in the battery production are shown from SI Tables S4 − S22. The industrial production of the SiNW is modeled based on a scale- up analysis of our lab experimentation in which 80 mg of SiNWs is obtained from metal-assisted chemical etching of 400 mg of silicon powder. For a conservative analysis, the lab-scale data on SiNW synthesis are linearly scaled up to the scale of producing 1 kg of SiNWs, as shown in SI Table S10. Another major source of the environmental impacts from the LIB pack using SiNW anode is the nanowastes and nanoparticle emissions generated from the SiNW synthesis process. Although current environmental impact assessment methods such as GaBi do not include such nanowastes and emissions and accordingly are not able to assess their potential impacts, inclusion of the nanowastes data and information in the life cycle inventory could support future research on development of environmental impact assessment methods for nanowastes, or provide decision support for reducing the quantity of nanowastes during the scale-up of the technology. Nanowastes are di ff erent from their bulk materials since the toxicity of nanomaterials is linked to their multivariant attributes such as mass, shape, particle size, particle number, and surface charge, etc. 16,53 In this study, the nanowastes from the SiNW synthesis process have no surface charge and hence are characterized on the mass, shape, particle size, and particle number (mass information shown in SI Table S10; shape, material compositions, and size distribution shown in Figure 3; particle size data shown in SI Table S3). The nanowastes are analyzed for both the solid nanowastes and the nanoparticles in the etching solution. Figure 3a is the silicon nanowastes with the reduced Ag catalyst deposited on the silicon surface, after the centrifuging separation from the SiNW product. Figure 3b is the Ag dendrite nanowastes on the surface of the silicon matrix. Figure 3c is the energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) characterization of the solid nanowaste compositions which con fi rms the wastes are composed of silicon and silver only. Figure 3d is the Zeta- potential analysis of the nanoparticle size and distribution within the etching solution, with average diameter obtained at 705.8 nm and geometric standard deviation at 1.703. Additional nanoparticle emission data from the SiNW synthesis process are listed in SI Table S3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment. Figure 4 shows the generations of conventional environmental impacts from various life cycle stages of the LIB pack using SiNW anode, as characterized by GaBi impact assessment method. The environmental impacts of SiNW nanowastes and emissions are not included in the impacts as no characterization factors and metrics are available in the conventional impact assessment methods. In current LCA studies of nanoproducts such as nanosilver T-shirt reported by Walser et al., 53 the impacts of nanospeci fi c e ff ects are not included. However, research on incorporating the nanomaterials ’ impacts into LCA is ongoing and may be accomplished in the near future. For example, Eckelman et al. has already developed characterization factors for evaluating the aquatic ecotoxicity of carbon nanotubes after their releases into freshwater. 54 Using the GaBi impact methods, the life cycle environmental impacts of the LIB pack are illustrated in terms of the de fi ned functional unit (i.e., one kilometer of EV driving) in Figure 4. The life cycle impact distributions among the six life cycle phases are expressed by the patterned bars, while the life cycle impact contributions of LIB components are shown by the colored bars which are the total impacts from such upstream stages including material extraction, material processing, component manufacture, and battery assembly. The results show that most of the life cycle impacts are generated in the battery use and material production stages. Battery use stage alone contributes to more than half of the life cycle impacts in categories such as ADP (51%), GWP (56%), AP (52%), EP (51%), POP (54%), and HTP (51%), while most impacts in ODP and EDP categories are generated from material extraction stage (58% and 85%, respectively). These results are in good agreement with the results published in refs 27, 29, and 55. The largest impact from the battery use stage is mainly from the primary energy consumption (2.94 × 10 5 MJ) during the 10-year service life of the EV. The total primary energy consumption in the use stage is about 18 times that of the embedded energy in the battery pack. The results demonstrate that the major opportunity for reducing the life cycle impacts of the battery pack is to use clean energy supply for battery operation, such as solar and wind electricity, which could reduce these environmental impacts signi fi cantly. 56 The SiNW anode as produced with large amount of embedded energy and toxic chemicals, contributes to 15% of GWP, 18% of ADP, 17% of POP, and 10% of HTP, respectively, to each corresponding life cycle impact category of the battery pack. In summary, the battery components (including anode, cathode, electrolyte, separator, cell casing, BMS, cooling system, and pack housing) together take a share of each corresponding impact ranging between 21% (HTP) and 77% (ETP). Absolute values of the impacts from each battery component and individual life cycle stages are presented in SI Tables S24 and S25. As the SiNW based LIBs are supposed to replace conventional graphite based LIBs to extend the driving range of the EVs, here a comparison is conducted between the life cycle impacts of such two battery packs, with the same power output (43.2 KWH). To validate the LCA model we developed for this study, we have benchmarked our LCA results of the conventional battery pack with the published results in literature. 27 As shown in SI Table S26, our LCA results on conventional LIBs are in good agreement with the LCA data in published literature. For instance, our study obtained 2.2 MJ/ km of life cycle energy and 0.155 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP, comparable to 1.97 MJ/km of energy and 0.181 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP in Notter ’ s work, 27 and 0.93 MJ/km of energy and 0.935 kg CO 2 ‐ eq /km of GWP in Zackrisson ’ s work. 26 The minor di ff erences might be from the data sources in that we used lab-scale manufacturing data and GaBi 6 professional database, while Notter and Zackrisson used Ecoinvent database. Also, the battery cathode material in our study is NMC, but LiMn 2 O 4 is used in Notter ’ s analysis and LiFePO 4 is used in Zackrisson ’ s study. With the validated LCA model, the life cycle impacts of the two battery packs are characterized using GaBi methods and benchmarked among each impact category in Figure 5. The results demonstrate that the compositions of the life cycle impacts from individual life cycle stages of the two battery packs are quite di ff erent. For example, the life cycle impacts of the conventional battery pack using carbon graphite are dominated by the battery use phase which contributes to 78% of ADP, 78% of GWP, 64% of AP, 75% of EP, 80% of POP, and 83% of HTP. Whereas for the battery pack using SiNW anode, the contributions of battery use stage are much lower because of the increased impacts from the battery production. This results from the increased energy storage capacity and the extended driving range of EVs, as well as the reduced mass of the battery pack. As calculated, the mass reduction from 360-kg conventional LIB pack to 120-kg SiNW battery pack could result in a 12.5% of primary energy saving, and 12.3 − 13.5% of impact savings on various impact categories during the usage of the battery packs (SI Table S27). During the SiNW battery production, a total of 0.077 kg CO 2 ‐ eq is generated, in comparison with 0.029 kg CO 2 ‐ eq generated from conventional battery production, per km of EV driving. As shown in Figure 5, the life cycle impacts of the battery pack with SiNW anode are roughly 6 − 43% higher than the corresponding impacts of the conventional battery pack. The largest di ff erence (43%) is in HTP category which is attributed to the use of toxic chemicals (HF and HNO 3 ) in synthesis of the SiNW materials. Overall the di ff erences of the impacts between the two battery packs, in average, are moderate. Considering the uncertainties in the lab-scale inventory data and the potential of impact reduction in future industrial ...
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... Rangarajan et al. (2022) There are uncertainties in terms of the energy, average life, cost, safety, and fast charging characteristics of lithium batteries suitable for the automotive sector. Li et al. (2014) It has shown that more than 50% of the most characterized emission impacts are caused by batteries used in electric cars. ...
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... To improve the environmental performance, a silicon or silicon oxide-based anode that has a high capacity, only second to lithium anode, could be paired with the sulfur cathode in future experiments. Some LCA studies have compared the silicon-based anode to conventional graphite anode in the NMC battery settings (Li et al., 2014;Lavigne Philippot et al., 2023). The current electrolyte was modeled using E/S = 4. Apart from improving the E/S ratio, different electrolytes, such as lithium triflate dissolved in sulfolane (Wickerts et al., 2023) or solid electrolytes (Barke et al., 2022), should be further investigated. ...
... The battery chemistry and its corresponding properties substantially influence their environmental impact, cost, and social acceptance. [1][2][3] The weight and efficiency of EVs are directly affected by battery mass. Therefore, lightweight battery cells with high specific energy are of paramount importance for electric vehicles. ...
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... rechargeable battery technology of choice. [1][2][3] However, for large scale applications such as grid storage systems, the battery cost become more important. [4,5] Sodium exhibits similar physico-chemical properties as lithium since they are both alkali metals and most importantly sodium is widely abundant on earth with much lower cost compared to lithium. ...
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As the use and applications of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) continue to grow, it becomes essential to assess their environmental impacts throughout their life cycle. Such assessment would be particularly interesting when the specifications and the technologies of the UAV are not yet frozen. This article aims to address this need by introducing a novel approach that integrates Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with
an existing design framework for sizing electric UAVs. The results show that the production and renewal of batteries is the main contributor to environmental impacts, together with electricity consumption during operation. Several scenarios are presented to explore the sensitivity of the environmental impacts to mission requirements and technological assumptions. The findings provide valuable insights to guide future developments and mitigate environmental impacts from the earliest design stages.
... Energy requirements for the dry room were based on the model by Chordia et al., 8 and detailed data were retrieved from personal communication with the first author of that study. The production of DOL and 44 and Deng et al. 14 The pouch consisting of aluminum and PE, as well as the production of the tabs, was modeled using Ellingsen et al. 45 as the data source. Production of battery modules was based on the "3 kWh Rack Mounted Battery" in Ainsworth 25 regarding outer dimensions and weight of the battery cells. ...
... Studies assessing the environmental impacts of LIBs assume total driving distances between 150,000 km and 200,000 km 34 . In this study, it is assumed that the EV's battery has a serves range of 180,000 km, and no replacement of batteries is considered during the use period. ...
As an important part of electric vehicles, lithium-ion battery packs will have a certain environmental impact in the use stage. To analyze the comprehensive environmental impact, 11 lithium-ion battery packs composed of different materials were selected as the research object. By introducing the life cycle assessment method and entropy weight method to quantify environmental load, a multilevel index evaluation system was established based on environmental battery characteristics. The results show that the Li–S battery is the cleanest battery in the use stage. In addition, in terms of power structure, when battery packs are used in China, the carbon footprint, ecological footprint, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, human toxicity cancer and human toxicity noncancer are much higher than those in the other four regions. Although the current power structure in China is not conducive to the sustainable development of electric vehicles, the optimization of the power structure is expected to make electric vehicles achieve clean driving in China.
