Environmental impact of all-organic batteries

Background

Batteries are today basedon metals, but the availability of e.g. cobalt and lithium has been stated as a motive for exploring alternative electrical energy storage solutions. Batteries free from metals could provide considerable advantages in terms of low environmental impact such as resource use and toxicity. All-organic batteries arestill on a very low technology readiness level, but the development of conductive redox polymers with high charging capacity and electrical conductivity is promising. However, before implementing new technologies it is important to assess the effects from raw material extraction to battery production, use and recycling with a system approach.

Aim

The aim is to quantify and assess the resource efficiencies and environmental impact of material supply, production, use and recycling in a life cycle perspective to identify hot spots and possible improvements for the battery system.

Approaches

The methodology of LCA will be appliedas a general approach; definition of goal and scope including system description and system boundaries, data inventory and analysis, impact assessment and hot spot analysis including sensitivity analysis.

Project leaders

The researchis performed in cooperation with Prof. Martin Sjödin at Uppsala University with Ass.Prof.Åke Nordberg and Prof.Per-Anders Hanssonat SLUas leaders for the life cycle assessment.

Other project members

PhD student Shan Zhang, SLU

Other funding agencies

Our research in this area is co-funded mainly from the National Energy Agency