Techno-economic feasibility of retired electric-

vehicle batteries repurpose/ reuse in second-life

applications:
The act of repurposing or reusing REVB is the process of using REVB in second-life
applications, whereas recycling refers to procedures used to recover resources
(metals and other chemical compounds) from the battery's electrodes. If an EV
battery-package is destroyed, it will be disposed of as Municipal Solid Waste
(MSW), resulting in vast amounts of undesired garbage entering landfills. Because
these batteries contain heavy metals and chemicals, they may cause lasting
environmental damage if discarded. Toxins from batteries have the potential to
contaminate land and water if they are absorbed into the soil. Thousands of live
animals' habitats might be jeopardised as a result of improper battery disposal
and chemical spills. Furthermore, transportation of the REVB to landfills could add
to the greenhouse gas effect which is common with other REVB EOL approaches;
repurpose and recycle.
Because lithium-ion batteries (LIB) are widely used to power EVs, it is expected
that consumption of lithium elements will continue to rise due to I their low
density and high electrochemical potential, allowing effective performance in
dynamic and stationary applications, and (ii) the lack of availability of alternative
battery storage systems with equivalent behaviour. Recycling retired LIBs saves
95%, 85%, and 74% of the energy necessary to extract aluminium, copper, and
iron from virgin materials, respectively, hence reducing greenhouse gas (GHG)
emissions significantly. Most current recycling procedures in industrialised
nations' recycling facilities recover Nickel and Cobalt rather than Lithium from
wasted LIBs. According to, no scientific contribution was identified to address
selective recovery of Lithium from retired LIBs; consequently, improvements in
present recycling systems and development of new sustainable Lithium recovery
technologies must be carried out to achieve optimal management of Lithium
resources. Although pyrometallurgy technologies have the potential to boost
battery recycling capacity, they need a high energy demand, emit pollutants, and
fail to recover high-quality lithium. Laboratory investigations indicated a high
recovery rate and purity of resources with successful hydrometallurgy recycling
trials. This method involves leaching with inorganic acids and separation for
strategic metals recovery. As a leaching acid, hydrochloric acid was utilised, and
the findings indicated 99.4% lithium recovery from wasted LIBs. Yet, it is a hard
and lengthy procedure that necessitates substantial financial commitment,
potentially delaying widespread industrial deployment.
Another interesting REVB EOL path is repurposing, which involves reassembling
modules to fit the technological requirements of less aggressive applications, such
as stationary energy storage. In comparison to conventional energy generation,
repurposing REVB in secondary applications might result in a 65% reduction in
CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, there is a significant technical hurdle in that
cascaded batteries must go through multiple steps in order to perform safely and
reliably in second-life projects; one regularly used technique is shown in Fig. 2,
which comprises evaluation, disassembly, clustering, and reassembly. Several
stage procedures would add financial charges to REVB's original capital cost,
perhaps diverting investors' attention. Moreover, the difference in battery
structure design and types used by EV manufacturers; makes the automated
disassembly process of modules challenging.

PG-2&3 FIG 1,2 (INSERT)

Nevertheless, there are alternative industrial approaches that entail battery pack
evaluation and direct reuse in secondary applications without dismantling them to
the module level, which might alleviate the budgetary issues associated with
manual or automated module disassembly and reassembly. Also, the graphic
indicates the battery's second EOL as 60%, although this is not proven in the
literature, and more study is needed.
According to, the present global energy crisis has fueled the need to accelerate
cleaner energy production and highlighted the critical role of renewable energy
technology in the energy business. With the increased penetration of low-carbon
energy technologies in energy generation, grid-scaled energy storage has received
substantial interest. Energy storage systems (ESS) improve the flexibility and
dependability of renewable energy systems (RES) by adjusting demand over time
to compensate for momentary discrepancies between energy supply and demand.
According to [18], due to fewer favourable weather conditions, the UK's RES
generation in the third quarter of 2021, comprising solar, wind, and hydro,
declined by 17% compared to the same period in 2020. This highlights the
difficulties involved with RES production and the solutions provided by ESS to
compensate for these deficiencies in energy output. As a result, the UK
government awarded 7 million GBP in funding to projects that develop advanced
energy storage technologies in 2022 in order to increase the resilience of RES
generation, solve undesirable variations in energy production, and increase the
contribution of low-carbon technologies to the UK's total energy production
profile. Realizing the potential of integrating ESS in RES; reassembling REVB
modules for repurposing in stationary RES applications could meet that
requirement by providing techno-economic-environmental benefits, increasing
the useful service lifetime of REVB, and mitigating the initial high investment in
new ESS.
There is a strong association between the technical performance of technological
breakthroughs and their financial feasibility, as it determines the important
criteria of investment and industrial implementation decision-making. Considering
a technology's social, economic, environmental, and technological elements is an
important role in decision making. As a result, the goal of this article is to examine
the technical and economic aspects of experimental and modelling studies
conducted to repurpose REVB in secondary applications. Economic and
environmental issues are outside the scope of this work and will be researched
further.

Critical technical parameters for second-life

applications:
Experimental trials and modelling investigations of using expended EV batteries in
second-life applications are included in peer-reviewed papers; hence, the initial
SoH of REVB at EOL is an important technical parameter to evaluate service
lifetime. The first SoH considered for each study is depicted in Fig. 13; some
studies include more than one starting SoH value due to the nature of the
experimental work adopted, performed an experimental examination on several
types of REVBs with varying initial SoH, ranging from 70% to above 90%. Batteries
with SoH more than 90% are deemed operable for automotive applications and
have not reached the end of their useful life. Nevertheless, the initial SoH ranged
from 70 to 81.31% in the other investigations, with the average SoH value
(excluding studies using multiple batteries) being 78.39%.
INSERT FIG -13, FROM PG-13
Additionally, the residual capacity of REVB at the end of life of a second life
application is an important metric that the authors evaluated to determine the
technical and economic viability of their concept. As shown, the stated second life
EOL across studies ranges from 50 to 60%; most economic and technical viability
studies evaluate SoH within this range because it is uncertain if REVB will be able
to run efficiently at a lower residual capacity. Furthermore, degradation
phenomena, namely the degradation knee parameter, which is referred to as the
beginning point where the deterioration rate switches from low to accelerated.
Researchers, on the other hand, are creating unique approaches for predicting
knee characteristics of a battery using machine learning, which will be efficient if
integrated into a battery model and aid in determining the estimated life cycle of
the battery.