Automated Battery Disassembly—Examination of the Product- and Process-Related Challenges for Automotive Traction Batteries

As the market share of electric vehicles continues to rise, the number of battery systems that are retired after their service life in the vehicle will also increase. This large growth in battery returns will also have a noticeable impact on processes such as battery disassembly. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to examine the challenges of the battery disassembly process in relation to the required increase in the degree of automation. For this purpose, a survey of various experts along the battery value chain was conducted, and product-side hurdles, such as the wide range of variants, and process-side challenges, such as the opening of the housing cover or the removal of cables and connectors, were identified. Together with an assessment of the potential degree of automation in the context of downstream processes (reuse, repair, remanufacturing, and recycling), this results in a variety of streams for future research in the field of automated battery disassembly. The core aspect in this context is data availability consisting of product and component data as well as process-relevant parameters.