Lithium ion car batteries: Present analysis and future predictions

Electric vehicles (EVs) are spreading rapidly and many counties are promoting hybrid and fully EVs through legislation. Therefore, an increasing amount of lithium ion batteries will reach the end of their usable life and will require effective and sustainable end-of-life management plan which include landfill disposal or incineration. The current research focuses on more sustainable methods such as remanufacturing, reuse and recycling in order to prepare for future battery compositions and provide insights to the need recycling methods to be developed to handle large amounts of batteries sustainably in the near future. The two most prominent material recovery techniques are hydrometallurgy and pyrometallurgy which are explored and assessed on their relative effectiveness, sustainability, and feasibility. Hydrometallurgy is a superior recycling method due to high material recovery and purity, very low emissions, high prevalence of chemical reuse and implementation of environmentally sustainable compounds. Expanding recycling technologies globally should take the research and technologies pioneered by Umicore to establish a sustainable recycling program for end-of-life EVs batteries. Emerging battery technology of Telsa show the most effective designs for high performance batteries includes the use of silicon which is expected to increase capacity of batteries in the future.