Environmental life cycle assessments of emerging anode materials for Li-ion batteries-metal oxide NPs

Lithium ion batteries are widely used to meet ever-growing energy demands. They are also considered as energy storage devices to decrease the concerns about limited energy sources and associated environmental issues by displacing a large fraction of gasoline use in HEV and PHEV. Due to these concerns, intensive research on alternative energy conversion and storage systems with high efficiency, low cost, and environmental benignity has been stimulated worldwide. Recently, nanostructured 3d-metal oxides MOx (M=Cu, Fe, Co, etc.) have been widely studied as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high energy capacity. Electrodes synthesized by Fe, Co, or Cu have more lithium-ion storage capacity (over 600 mAh/g) compared to the commercial electrodes synthesized by graphite (about 372 mAh/g). The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is utilized in order to identify environmental hotspots and aid in directing design towards regenerative and environmentally sustainable product design and process development. The main aim of this study is to investigate environmental effects of different lithium-ion batteries with different metal oxides as anode active material. The life cycle assessment results showed that metal oxides like Iron oxide can be a promising anode material due to their much higher energy density. In the production phase, the most important stage is production of NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, an organic solvent in electrode preparation), for batteries with graphite and anode active material production for batteries with copper oxides. (c) 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 1740-1747, 2015