Environmental Sustainability Assessment of Typical Cathode Materials of Lithium-Ion Battery Based on Three LCA Approaches

Abstract

With the rapid increase in production of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and environmental issues arising around the world, cathode materials, as the key component of all LIBs, especially need to be environmentally sustainable. However, a variety of life cycle assessment (LCA) methods increase the difficulty of environmental sustainability assessment. Three authoritative LCAs, IMPACT 2002+, Eco-indicator 99(EI-99), and ReCiPe, are used to assess three traditional marketization cathode materials, compared with a new cathode model, FeF3(H2O)3/C. They all show that four cathode models are ranked by a descending sequence of environmental sustainable potential: FeF3(H2O)3/C, LiFe0.98Mn0.02PO4/C, LiFePO4/C, and LiCoO2/C in total values. Human health is a common issue regarding these four cathode materials. Lithium is the main contributor to the environmental impact of the latter three cathode materials. At the midpoint level in different LCAs, the toxicity and land issues for LiCoO2/C, the non-renewable resource consumption for LiFePO4/C, the metal resource consumption for LiFe0.98Mn0.02PO4/C, and the mineral refinement for FeF3(H2O)3/C show relatively low environmental sustainability. Three LCAs have little influence on total endpoint and element contribution values. However, at the midpoint level, the indicator with the lowest environmental sustainability for the same cathode materials is different in different methodologies.