École Nationale Supérieure de
Techniques Avancées

Résumé

This paper investigates the overlap between environmental and economic viability of the Lithium Ion Battery (LIB) recycling market in the European Union (EU). Amidst the important growth of the LIB market driven by the energy transition, the increased demand of raw materials has caused concerns around the sustainability of the industry. Combined with the dependence of the EU on imports of critical materials from East Asia, these concerns have encouraged EU regulators to push towards a closed-loop market. However, fueled by profitability, industrial recyclers have been reluctant to stray from the current open market due to a lack of economic viability. This paper identifies critical research gaps in literature including the lack of geographical visualisation of material flows, lack of transparency of industrial processes, and the separation of economic and environmental cost evaluations. Through a comprehensive literature review and the creation of a new meta-model for cost evaluation of recycling, this paper uses a Life Cycle Approach to bridge the gap between economic and environmental objectives. The results aim to regroup information on the EU LIB market to create a coherent image of the currently observed phenomenon, and provide a method to optimise LIB recycling for both profit oriented industrial actors and environmental concerns, in the hopes of leading towards developing recycling capable of a self-sustaining EU LIB market.