LCA for lithium battery recycling technology-recent progress

With the rapid development and wide application of lithium-ion battery (LIB) technology, a significant proportion of LIBs will be on the verge of reaching their end of life. How to handle LIBs at the waste stage has become a hot environmental issue today. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a valuable method for evaluating the environmental effects of products, but many LCA studies have only emphasized on the environmental effects of the production stage of LIBs; there are a restricted number of LCA studies on the recycling phase of electrode materials. This paper comprehensively reviews the relevant literatures on the LCA of Li-ion battery recycling process in the last few years, summarizes existing spent LIBs recycling processes, compares the advantages and disadvantages of the existing recovery technologies and summarizes the development of the LIBs cathode material recycling process. Some suggestions are made to improve the comparability and reliability of related LCA research, which has some guiding significance.