Battery Manufacturing Resource Assessment to Minimise Component Production Environmental Impacts

A promising route to attain a reliable impact reduction of supply chain materials is based on considering circular economy approaches, such as material recycling strategies. This work aimed to evaluate potential benefits of recycling scenarios for steel, copper, aluminium and plastic materials to the battery manufacturing stage. Focused on this aim, the life cycle assessment (LCA) and the environmental externalities methodologies were applied to two battery study cases: lithium manganese oxide and vanadium redox flow (VRFB) batteries, based on a cradle-to-gate LCA approach. In general, the results provided an insight into the raw material handling route. Environmental impacts were diminished by more than 20% in almost all the indicators, due to the lower consumption of virgin materials related to the implemented recyclability route. Particularly, VRFB exhibited better recyclability ratio than the Li-ion battery. For the former, the key components were the periphery ones attaining around 70% of impact reduction by recycling steel. Components of the power subsystem were also relevant, reaching around 40% of environmental impact reduction by recycling plastic. The results also foresaw opportunities for membranes, key components of VRFB materials. Based on findings, recycling strategies may improve the total circularity performance and economic viability of the studied systems

Decision Support System of Innovative High-Temperature Latent Heat Storage for Waste Heat Recovery in the Energy-Intensive Industry

Reductions in energy consumption, carbon footprint, equipment size, and cost are key objectives for the forthcoming energy-intensive industries roadmaps. In this sense, solutions such as waste heat recovery, which can be replicated into different sectors (e.g., ceramics, concrete, glass, steel, aluminium, pulp, and paper) are highly promoted. In this line, latent heat thermal energy storage (TES) contributes as an innovative technology solution to improve the overall system efficiency by recovering and storing industrial waste heat. To this end, phase-change material (PCM) selection is assisted through a decision-support system (DSS). A simplified tool based on the MATLAB(R) model, based on correlations among the most relevant system parameters, was developed to prove the feasibility of a cross-sectorial approach. The research work conducted a parametric analysis to assess the techno-economic performance of the PCM-TES solution under different working conditions and sectors. Additionally, a multicriteria assessment was performed comparing the tool outputs from metal alloys and inorganic hydrated PCM salts. Overall, the inorganic PCMs presented higher net economic and energy savings (up to 25, 000 euro/yr; 480 MWh/yr), while metal alloys involved promising results, shorter cycles, and competitive economic ratios; its commercial development is still limited