Session
TU.3.E || Circular Economy and Circular Society in LCM
Authors
Fallahi, Sara; Diener, Derek; Kazmierczak, Karolina; Calderon, Pavel
Abstract
With the ever-growing number of Li-ion batteries used in diverse applications in the transport and energy sectors, securing a sustainable and circular battery economy is becoming a necessity. Previous research highlights that for batteries and their materials to enter a more circular value chain, there is a need for increased collaboration and trust between actors. Ideally, a battery cell should change application after electric performance degradation into applications that are less demanding before being sent for recycling. By doing this, the full potential from the batteries could be exploited, and a more sustainable solution would be assured. Orchestrating a value chain that facilitates utilization, endurance, and recirculation of batteries requires collection, structuring, and sharing of data from the batteries along their life cycle which in turn would require collaborative innovation efforts of existing processes and business models towards a functioning circular business ecosystem. This submission will share results from an ongoing research project that has mapped data access and data needs along the battery ecosystem with the aim of developing a tool that helps to increase trust and transparency in a circular value chain of batteries by verifying and tracking performance of individual battery cells. The project studies how information about the battery’s health can be verified and shared among value chain partners in a secure and reliable manner to enable the trade of batteries and exchange of knowledge. The solution will contribute to increasing the share of batteries being reused and recycled than what is reached today. In addition, sustainability goals such as improving the traceability of critical materials and assuring the origins of materials can be logged, and higher recycling rates can be reached. This will in turn makes it easier to trace recovery levels for high valuable materials such as cobalt and lithium