An integrated fuzzy multi-criteria evaluation of lithium-ion battery recycling processes

Abstract

The increasing environmental degradation, fossil fuel prices and political implications of fossil fuel dependency have increased the demand of battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles with lithium-ion batteries (LiBs). However, LiBs use various materials such as plastics, copper, aluminium and nickel, along with scarce metals such as cobalt and lithium. Therefore, the recycling of these batteries is important but the selection of recycling process for these batteries is a complex problem. Alternative recycling processes have to be evaluated with respect to different criteria such as energy consumption, material recovery, environmental impact, health and safety, processing time, degree of flexibility, initial investment and labour cost. This paper provides an integrated fuzzy multi-criteria decision model using fuzzy analytical hierarchical process and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution for the evaluation of different recycling alternatives for LiBs. The proposed model has been validated by a case study.