Model building on Electricity production via SOFC by using ammonia

past

Batteries recycling models

Semester/Master project

Context

The global electric car fleet grew to 10.9 million vehicles in 2020, which amounts to three million more than in the previous year. From 2030 onward, electric vehicles could make up between 25 and 75 % of new registrations. This will lead to a demand for battery power of between 1 and 6 TWh per year, depending on the study one reads.

As electric vehicles become more widespread, the demand for special raw materials for the vehicles and, in particular, for the batteries will continue to grow. All the forecasts indicate that lithium-ion batteries will be the standard solution for electric cars over the next ten years and so the main substances needed will be the chemical elements graphite, cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel. Despite the developments in cell chemistry, the proportion of lithium by weight in each cell of around 72 g/kg is not likely to reduce noticeably during this period, according to estimates by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI). The demand for primary raw materials for vehicle battery production by 2030 should amount to between 250,000 and 450,000 t of lithium, between 250,000 and 420,000 t of cobalt and between 1.3 and 2.4 million t of nickel.

To reduce the world’s dependence on the raw material producing countries, establishing a comprehensive recycling structure will become increasingly important in the future. Processes for recovering raw materials from small lithium-ion batteries, such as those in cell phones, are in part already being implemented. However, vehicle batteries are much larger, heavier and more powerful, which makes industrializing the recycling process more complex. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), together with Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, is funding the Libero research project at RWTH Aachen University as part of the Central Innovation Program for SMEs (ZIM). The German-Swedish consortium, consisting of two partners from industry and two from the research world in each country, is working on developing a robust, flexible and largely waste-free process for recycling batteries. The goal is to plan a plant with an annual recycling capacity of 25,000 t of battery mass. The Finnish company Fortum, has already developed a process for recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles.

One of the pioneers in the field of commercial battery recycling is Umicore. The process developed by the company consists of a pyro-metallurgical and a hydro-metallurgical phase. The initial thermal processing stage produces an alloy that contains cobalt, nickel and copper and a slag fraction. The metals are recovered in the subsequent hydro-metallurgical stage of the process. Umicore’s first recycling plant has a capacity of 7,000 t of battery mass per year, which corresponds to around 35,000 electric-vehicle batteries. In early 2021, Volkswagen began operations at a pilot plant for recycling high-voltage vehicle batteries at its site in the German town of Salzgitter. The plant will recover 100 % of the lithium, nickel, manganese and cobalt, plus 90 % of the aluminum, copper and plastic. The plant is currently designed to recycle up to 3,600 battery systems per year, which is the equivalent of around 1,500 t of battery mass. However, the system can be scaled up to process larger volumes when more used batteries become available. According to Volkswagen, the recycling process does not involve smelting in a blast furnace, which would use large amounts of energy. The used battery systems delivered to the plant are deep discharged and disassembled. The individual parts are shredded to form granulate and this is then dried. The process produces aluminum, copper and plastics and, most importantly, a black powdery mixture that contains the essential battery raw materials: lithium, nickel, manganese, cobalt and graphite. Specialist partners of Volkswagen are subsequently responsible for separating and processing the individual elements by means of hydro-metallurgical processes that use water and chemicals.

The project

This project will be organised in the following steps.

  • Analysis and understanding of the main recycling treatments (published papers and patents).
  • Model development for batteries recycling, according to the latest state-of-the-art.
  • Integration (and optimization) of the recycling process within a national/global supply chain.

Skills

  • Experience with flowsheeting software (e.g., Aspen Plus) strongly recommended
  • Understanding of energy integration and process optimization
  • Results interpretation and report writing
  • Language skills: English (C1/C2 level)
  • Coding skills: Python is a plus
  • Courses recommended to have: Process design / developement, Renewable Energy, Advanced Energetics

Administrative

This project is part of wide research work on 100% clean energy systems, coordinated by IPESE/EPFL. If interested, please send your CV, transcript of records (bachelor and master), and a short motivation letter, to Rafael Amoedo.

Location

The IPESE laboratory is located in the Sion EPFL campus. Working in Sion office or remotely depends on Covid situation. Travels between Lausanne and Sion are compensated by EPFL.

Supervisors

Rafael Amoedo, rafael.amoedo@epfl.ch