Roadmap for a sustainable circular economy in lithium-ion and future battery technologies

The market dynamics, and their impact on a future circular economy for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), are presented in this roadmap, with safety as an integral consideration throughout the life cycle. At the point of end-of-life (EOL), there is a range of potential options—remanufacturing, reuse and recycling. Diagnostics play a significant role in evaluating the state-of-health and condition of batteries, and improvements to diagnostic techniques are evaluated. At present, manual disassembly dominates EOL disposal, however, given the volumes of future batteries that are to be anticipated, automated approaches to the dismantling of EOL battery packs will be key. The first stage in recycling after the removal of the cells is the initial cell-breaking or opening step. Approaches to this are reviewed, contrasting shredding and cell disassembly as two alternative approaches. Design for recycling is one approach that could assist in easier disassembly of cells, and new approaches to cell design that could enable the circular economy of LIBs are reviewed. After disassembly, subsequent separation of the black mass is performed before further concentration of components. There are a plethora of alternative approaches for recovering materials; this roadmap sets out the future directions for a range of approaches including pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, short-loop, direct, and the biological recovery of LIB materials. Furthermore, anode, lithium, electrolyte, binder and plastics recovery are considered in order to maximise the proportion of materials recovered, minimise waste and point the way towards zero-waste recycling. The life-cycle implications of a circular economy are discussed considering the overall system of LIB recycling, and also directly investigating the different recycling methods. The legal and regulatory perspectives are also considered. Finally, with a view to the future, approaches for next-generation battery chemistries and recycling are evaluated, identifying gaps for research. This review takes the form of a series of short reviews, with each section written independently by a diverse international authorship of experts on the topic. Collectively, these reviews form a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in LIB recycling, and how these technologies are expected to develop in the future

The common field landscape: cultural commemoration and the impact of enclosure, c.1770-1850

The period of parliamentary enclosure in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has been viewed by many historians as the critical turning point in the history of the English landscape, its agriculture, and in the lives of those who lived there during this period. Indeed, the historiography of English rural life in the modern period has been dominated by the social and agricultural upheaval and change caused by parliamentary enclosure, dominating the assessments of land ownership and use within a number of related academic fields. Equally, art historians have generally examined paintings of the English landscape and its way of life only in relation to the ideologies of improvement and social change brought about by enclosure. As such, and as the landscape art historian, Michael Rosenthal, has put it, ‘we have tended not to keep an eye on (enclosure’s) antithesis – the common field landscape’. This chapter will readdress this position by exploring how the work of a number of artists and writers, such as William Turner of Oxford and Thomas Miller, continued to deliberately celebrate the common field landscape long after the process of enclosure had virtually wiped it out. It will explore the quite idiosyncratic nature of these visual and literary articulations of the common field landscape, and the deeply felt cultural and psychological motives for producing these in the face of the impact of enclosure

Raw, roast or half-baked? Hogarth’s beef in Calais Gate

Scholars of human–animal studies, literary criticism and art history have paid considerable attention of late to how the visual representation of nonhuman animals has often and sometimes to great effect been used in the imagining of national identity. It is from the scrutinies of these several disciplines that the broad backcloth of this article is woven. Its focus is the neglected coupling of patriotism and carnism, instantiated here by its deployment in William Hogarth’s painting Calais Gate (1749). A pro-animal reading is offered of the English artist’s exhortation that it is in the nature of ‘true-born Britons’ to consume a daily dish of roast beef served with lashings of francophobia and anti-popery. The article suggests that alert contemporary viewers of Calais Gate would nevertheless have noticed that Hogarth’s painterly triumphalism ironically rekindles the repressed memory of English military defeat and territorial loss. Because the political and religious borders between England and France were so easily defaced and refaced, the accompanying air of uncertainty over national identity would also have infiltrated the perceived authenticity of English roast beef. The article draws on animal rights theory, on nonspeciesist green criminology and on green visual criminology in order to oppose the historical dominance of human interests over those of other animal species in discourses of abuse, cruelty and harm

Battery Recycling: Legal and Regulatory

The market dynamics, and their impact on a future circular economy for lithium-ion batteries (LIB), are presented in this roadmap, with safety as an integral consideration throughout the life cycle. At the point of end-of-life (EOL), there is a range of potential options—remanufacturing, reuse and recycling. Diagnostics play a significant role in evaluating the state-of-health and condition of batteries, and improvements to diagnostic techniques are evaluated. At present, manual disassembly dominates EOL disposal, however, given the volumes of future batteries that are to be anticipated, automated approaches to the dismantling of EOL battery packs will be key. The first stage in recycling after the removal of the cells is the initial cell-breaking or opening step. Approaches to this are reviewed, contrasting shredding and cell disassembly as two alternative approaches. Design for recycling is one approach that could assist in easier disassembly of cells, and new approaches to cell design that could enable the circular economy of LIBs are reviewed. After disassembly, subsequent separation of the black mass is performed before further concentration of components. There are a plethora of alternative approaches for recovering materials; this roadmap sets out the future directions for a range of approaches including pyrometallurgy, hydrometallurgy, short-loop, direct, and the biological recovery of LIB materials. Furthermore, anode, lithium, electrolyte, binder and plastics recovery are considered in order to maximise the proportion of materials recovered, minimise waste and point the way towards zero-waste recycling. The life-cycle implications of a circular economy are discussed considering the overall system of LIB recycling, and also directly investigating the different recycling methods. The legal and regulatory perspectives are also considered. Finally, with a view to the future, approaches for next-generation battery chemistries and recycling are evaluated, identifying gaps for research. This review takes the form of a series of short reviews, with each section written independently by a diverse international authorship of experts on the topic. Collectively, these reviews form a comprehensive picture of the current state of the art in LIB recycling, and how these technologies are expected to develop in the future