Current Trend of EV (Electric Vehicle) Waste Battery Diagnosis and Dismantling Technologies and a Suggestion for Future R&D Strategy with Environmental Friendliness

Owing to the increasing demand for electric vehicles (EVs), appropriate management of their waste batteries is required urgently for scrapped vehicles or for addressing battery aging. With respect to technological developments, data-driven diagnosis of waste EV batteries and management technologies have drawn increasing attention. Moreover, robot-based automatic dismantling technologies, which are seemingly interesting, require industrial verifications and linkages with future battery-related database systems. Among these, it is critical to develop and disseminate various advanced battery diagnosis and assessment techniques to improve the efficiency and safety/environment of the recirculation of waste batteries. Incorporation of lithium-related chemical substances in the public pollutant release and transfer register (PRTR) database as well as in-depth risk assessment of gas emissions in waste EV battery combustion and their relevant fire safety are some of the necessary steps. Further research and development thus are needed for optimizing the lifecycle management of waste batteries from various aspects related to data-based diagnosis/classification/disassembly processes as well as reuse/recycling and final disposal. The idea here is that the data should contribute to clean design and manufacturing to reduce the environmental burden and facilitate in future production of batteries. Such optimization should also consider the future technological and market trends.