Science Daily December 15, 2023
An international team of researchers (Sweden, Norway) performed a prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) of large-scale production of two different sodium-ion battery (SIB) cells with a cradle-to-gate system boundary. The SIB cells modeled have Prussian white cathodes and hard carbon anodes based only on abundant elements and thus constituted potentially preferable options to current lithium-ion battery (LIB) cells from a mineral resource. The functional unit was 1 kWh theoretical electricity storage capacity, and the specific energy density of the cells was 160 Wh/kg. For SIB cell materials, prospective inventory data was obtained from a generic eight-step procedure developed, which could be used by other LCA practitioners. The results showed that both SIB cells indeed had considerably lower mineral resource scarcity impacts than nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC)-type LIB cells in a cradle-to-gate perspective, while their global warming impacts were on par. Their recommendations to SIB manufacturers are to source fossil-free electricity for cell production and use hard carbon anodes based on lignin instead of phenolic resin. Since none of the assessed electrolytes had clearly lower cradle-to-gate impacts than any other, they recommended research into SIB electrolyte materials with low environmental and resource impacts… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Cradle-to-gate results for Cells 1 and 2 regarding (a) global warming, (b) fossil energy scarcity… Credit: Journal of Industrial Ecology, 13 November 2023