Techno-economic and environmental disassembly planning of lithium-ion electric vehicle battery packs for remanufacturing

The rapidly-growing use of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide will generate a huge quantity of end-of-life (EoL) products in the coming decades and, in consequence, there will be an accumulation of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) to be disposed of. Therefore, actions to favour the recovery of certain components from EVs, such as the electric vehicle battery (EVB), generates an opportunity for research. This paper presents a model for designing the disassembly process of the EVB pack for remanufacturing, obtaining the highest economic profitability from the process with the minimum environmental impact. Based on the disassembly sequence planning (DSP), the model provides the optimal disassembly level and the most suitable decision for the use of the disassembled components: reuse, remanufacturing, recycling or disposal. The lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery from the Audi A3 Sportback e-tron Hybrid is selected as the case study. Different case study scenarios based on the state of health (SOH) of the batteries are proposed. The results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the model, providing significant insights into the recovery processes of WEEE, particularly Li-ion EVB packs.