Cathodes Materials Of Lithium Ion Battery Comparative Analysis Based On Life Cycle Assessment

Energy is an important national strategic resource, which plays a very important role topromote and protect the economic and social development. With the oil prices growing, newenergy vehicles replace the internal combustion engine vehicles which use fuel is in theascendant. Among them，electric vehicles with lithium-ion battery being power source arebeing caught attention. How to choose the most important cathode material in lithium-ionbattery is the problem of the lithium-ion battery suppliers and manufacturers of cathodematerials faced.The choice of cathode materials is generally the performance of the merits of the material,the mainstream cathode materials include the ternary material, LiMnO2and LiFeO₄, For twocathode both have the advantages and disadvantages. LiMnO2have the poor cyclingperformance, when in the process of charging and discharging Jahn-Teller effect happens inthe transformation of the cubic crystal system to tetragonal system, with the volumeexpansion and cycle performance degrades under high temperature of55degrees; LiFeO₄material have lower conductivity, resulting in poor rate capability of the material. This paperattempts to consider the environmental benefits of the cathode material from theenvironmental impact assessment point of view, the traditional environmental impact ingeneral only consider the impact of pollutant emissions of the production phase, the overallimpact on the various stages of product life cycle analysis is not enough. This paper make lifecycle cost analysis and systematic analysis of the cathode materials for lithium based on thelife cycle assessment.This paper firstly consider the type of four environmental impact of cathode materials forlithium systems: global warming, atmospheric acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication, andthe eight kinds of pollution emissions: CH₄, N₂O, CO₂,VOC, CO, NO_x, PM, and SO_x. Thecalculation of the various types of environmental impact potential values and the use of theanalytic hierarchy process to quantify the weighted assessment results in the totalenvironmental impact of the last three cathode materials. The results show that environmentalbenefits of lithium iron phosphate, lithium manganese oxide and ternary material arewere0.006693,0.003907and0.012666and the environmental benefits of lithium manganeseoxide is the highest with greater environmental benefits than the lithium iron phosphate.Finally, life cycle cost analysis method, the lithium-ion battery product life cycle is dividedinto four phases: access and transportation of raw materials, manufacturing and processing,the use and maintenance, and abandonment and recycle, the lithium-ion battery product life cycle cost should be the sum of the four stages of internal and external costs. In the sametime，this paper make single-factor sensitivity analysis of the cost of lithium-ion batterycathode materials and lithium carbonate raw material costs with reference to historical data.The results show that：the life cycle environment cost of LiFeO₄is the lowest，followedLiMn₂O₄and LiNi_1/3Co_1/3Mn_1/3O2，in turn the mean annual cost of LiMn₂O₄is the lowest，followed LiFeO₄and LiNi_1/3Co_1/3Mn_1/3O₂.The results of life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis has a certain reference valueof the promotion of new energy vehicles, as well as market and cathode materials ofmanufacturers to select the material.