Recycling and Re-Use of Lithium-Ion Batteries (ReLiB)
Authors: Mrozik Wojciech 
Published: February 2020

Newcastle University is part of the Recycling and Re-use of Lithium-ion Batteries (ReLiB) project that aims to facilitate the creation of a UK re-use/recycling industry to recycle > 90% of automotive batteries. It is in order to make better use of global resources, increased decarbonisation and ultimately dedicate to mitigate the climate change issues. The project tackles the most demanding technical challenges in sensing, gateway testing, robotic sorting, re-use and recycling of batteries coming from EVs. The project is extremely wide-ranging covering everything from lifecycle, technical and economic assessment and legal liability issues, to tackling the most demanding technical challenges in sensing, gateway testing, robotic sorting, re-use and recycling of automotive batteries.

The £9M ReLiB project is led by Birmingham University and includes a total of eight universities and 14 industrial partners. ReLiB was funded by the UK’s flagship Faraday Institution that supports research, training, and analysis in the electrochemical energy storage, science and technology.

At Newcastle University, the team is assessing risk, identifying safe management methods and developing response protocols for handling used batteries. Abuse of Lithium ion batteries by overcharging or short circuit can lead to fire or even explosion, and one of the tasks of the Newcastle University team in close collaboration with researchers from the Extreme Robotics Lab of the University of Birmingham is to trains robots to disassemble the battery packs. This will be achieved by the use of various 3-D analyses and imaging techniques with the aim of removing . Ultimately, that will remove any risk to human health when disassembling very high voltage and high energy automotive batteries.

The Newcastle team is investigating energy management applications and developing non-destructive testing techniques (NDT) to predict and certify the second lifetime. A set of NDTs (e.g. Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy and thermal imaging) are being employed to assess the state of health (SOH) of batteries in order to make a decision regarding whether a module or cell should be re-used or recycled, in a so-called ‘gateway’ test for re-use or materials recovery. Results so obtained will be compared to analytical data from teardown at the University of Birmingham and material analyses at the University of Leicester and with the aim of identifying potentially dangerous ageing mechanisms such as lithium plating.

Using gateway sensing, the NU team will develop new assessments for low carbon transport strategies and characterise the performance of second-life battery packs operating in power and energy ancillary service markets. The suitability of second life batteries for various applications will be explored in terms of technical performance, life-cycle costing and the challenges of integration into existing and future infrastructure systems. This understanding will feed directly into economic models for reuse. In addition, new business models and regulatory frameworks will be investigated in conjunction with the complete, full-cycle value chain. A detailed understanding of second life battery pack lifetime will hence be developed and demonstrated.

Other academic partners are investigating various processes, approaches and techniques with the aim of achieving the maximum value for the components and minimising the cost of processing. These include: physical processing, upgrading of battery components, pyrometallurgical recovery of metals and novel biological recovery routes. The re-use/recycling processes will be subjected to Life Cycle Assessment in order to evaluate their environmental impact and pick the one with the smallest footprint. Such a comprehensive approach is designed to give the collaborating recycling companies a competitive edge in the growing market.

The increasing application of LiBs in electric vehicles and high energy storage systems has led the Newcastle team to realise there is an urgent need for the education of the public, businesses, government organisations and the emergency services in the safe handling of LiBs and hazards associated with these devices when involved in fires. To this end, the ReLiB team is advising a range of organisations including the Fire and Rescue Service, the Department for Transport and the CBI, and is actively seeking to disseminate specialist help and advice to a broader range of stakeholders. The team is due to carry out fire safety tests on LiBs in collaboration with the Tyne and Wear Fire Service in order to aid them in refining their firefighting procedures for fires involving an electric vehicle.

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