Moving towards a circular economy: A systematic review of barriers to electric vehicle battery recycling

Abstract

In view of the fact that the rapidly growing number of electric vehicles around the world will result in more used batteries, how to efficiently recycle used batteries has become an important issue for sustainable development practices. Recognizing that the recycling of used batteries is affected by many factors, there is an urgent need to clarify the barriers to recycling used batteries. The lack of systematic reviews has led to an incomplete understanding of the barriers to battery recycling and a failure to effectively integrate the results and perspectives of various studies. In this paper, a systematic literature review has been conducted according to the PRISMA systematic review checklist to explore the current state of scientific research on the factors influencing the recycling of used batteries in order to summarize the potential barriers to the recycling of used batteries. By analyzing 92 articles from Web of Science and Google Scholar, this study identifies the key factors affecting the recycling of used batteries, including six dimensions: technology, economy, society, environment, policies and regulations, and supply chain, and systematically analyses the barriers within each dimension. Furthermore, this paper highlights several potential future research directions to further overcome these barriers, i.e. the need for comprehensive influencing factor studies, recycling network optimization, consumer behavior, policy effectiveness assessment, recycling market mechanisms, life cycle assessment, case studies, battery life data and cross-industry collaboration. These research directions provide practical guidance for researchers to further explore the recycling of used batteries and provide insights for practice and research towards a circular economy.