EV LIBs towards circular economy: literature review of electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries LCA for a circular economy implementation

The electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries are strategic products and wide literature on environmental assessment is available in the field. This papers review aims to provide an overlook of the recent studies on EV LIB LCA applications, giving priority to product systems including circular economy treatments such as remanufacturing, repurpose and recycling. From the literature analysis it emerged that most of the environmental assessments considered repurpose and recycling strategies and only in one case the remanufacturing process. Different functional units, LCA approaches, and impact categories were investigated by the practitioners. Some authors highlighted lack of primary data and LCA guidelines for remanufacturing and repurpose. In one case a non-intuitive correlation between circularity and environmental sustainability was detected. Therefore, further investigation in these directions is encouraged.