Life Cycle Assessment of Silicon-Nanotube-Based Lithium Ion Battery for Electric Vehicles

The
study presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of a next-generation
lithium ion battery pack using silicon nanotube anode (SiNT), nickel–cobalt-manganese
oxide cathode, and lithium hexafluorophosphate electrolyte. The battery
pack is characterized with 63 kWh capacity to power a midsized electric
vehicle (EV) for a 320 km range. A novel LCA model is developed through
the inventory analyses of the SiNT anode manufacturing conducted on
the basis of our lab-scale experimentation, and the inventory of the
NMC-SiNT battery manufacturing is constructed from our industrial
partners’ pilot-scale battery production facilities. The upstream
and downstream inventory analyses are performed through professional
LCA databases and public literature. The obtained impact results of
the NMC-SiNT battery are benchmarked with those of a conventional
NMC-Graphite battery pack under the same driving distance per charge
baseline. The results show that the NMC-SiNT battery has comparable
environmental impacts with the conventional NMC-Graphite battery,
with 10%–17% higher impacts in global warming potential and
fossil depletion potential and 39%–56% lower impacts in human
toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, and marine toxicity. In this study,
a sensitivity analysis is also performed to investigate the robustness
and reliability of the LCA results. Finally, the paper conducted a
scenario analysis to identify potential ways to improve the environmental
performance of the NMC-SiNT battery for future sustainable development
in EVs’ application.