Life Cycle Assessment Research Of Typical Storage Battery

Storage battery,also called secondary battery,is a device converting chemical energy to electrical energy.After the development of over 100 years,it has been widely used in the field of energy,transportation and electronic equipments,etc.The most popular storage batteries are lead-acid batteries and lithium ion batteries.Battery production has kept growing rapidly in recent years.In China,the total cumulative output suppursed 220.7 GWh in large battery enterprises,which accounts for more than 40%of the world's total output.However,environmental problems such as resource consumption and heavy metal pollution are accompanied with its rapid development.Taking the typical storage battery of lead acid battery(LAB),lithium manganese battery(LMB)and lithium iron phosphate battery(LIPB)as research objects,the corresponding environmental impact and influential factors are analyzed.It is beneficial to achieve pollutants control in the whole process,reduce the costs of production and promote the sustainable development of this industry.Life Cycle Assessment(LCA)and Life Cycle Costing(LCC)were applid to compare the environmental and economic costs of the three kinds of storage batteries mentioned above in the system boundary of "Cradle-Gate".The key processes and key materials of environmental and economic costs are recognized.The sensitive analysis of key process,cycle number and charge-discharge efficiency were also analyzed.The specific suggestions for the improvement of production process were proposed according to the "3R" principle of circular economy theory.It was found that the major potential environmental impacts in the boundary of the battery system were freshwater eutrophication,human toxicity,freshwater ecotoxicity,marine ecotoxicity and metal depletion.The total environmental impact of LAB was the biggest one.LMB and LIPB occupied the second and the third place in the aspect of total environmental impact.The key process of environmental and economic costs of LAB was the unformed plate manufacturing process,which accounted for 80.56%of the total environmental impact and 81.22%of the total economic costs,respectively.The key substance that caused environmental impact was refined lead and tin in the unformed plate manufacturing process.The environmental impact of refined lead and tin accounted for 46.3%and 32.41%of the total environmental impact,respectively.The cathode plate manufacturing process,the assembly process and the negative plates manufacturing process in LMB was the key process of environmental impact.These processes accounted for 61.19%,18.7%and 15.92%of the total environmental impact.They also ocupied 35.73%,23.26%and 21.68%of the total economic costs,respectively.The key substance was the lithium manganate in cathode plate manufacturing process and the aluminum shell in assembly process.Their proportion of the total environmental impact was 46.93%and 18.23%,respectively.The key process of the environmental impact in LIPB was the cathode plate manufacturing process,the assembly process and the negative plates manufacturing process.These processes accounted for 52.98%,21.26%and 17.68%of the total environmental impact.They also accounted for 40.05%,20.48%and 20.48%of the total economic costs respectively.Lithium iron phosphate in the cathode plate manufacturing process and aluminum shell in the assembly process were the key substances of environmental impact.They accounted for 41.4%and 20.6%of the total environmental impact,respectively.In addition,improving the cycle number and charge-discharge efficiency of battery was also an effective way to reduce environmental impact.The results showed that if the cycle number and charge-discharge efficiency of battery was increased by 10%,the environmental impact could reduced by about 9%and 11%,respectively.Based on life cycle environmental and economic costs assessment,optimizations to the key process were analyzed according to the "3R" principle of circular economic theory.Improving the unformed plate manufacturing process of the LAB,reducing the usage of refined lead and tin could reduce the impact of both environmental impacts and economic costs.Optimizing the cathode plate manufacturing process of LMB and LIPB,reducing the consumption of lithium manganese and lithium iron phosphate by the improvementof technological level and production management level can reduce the environmental impacts and economic costs effectively.Improving the assembly process of LMB and LIPB,increasing the aluminum utilization efficiency by recycling waste resources can reduce the environmental impacts significantly.