| Category | SOFT | P28 | Eco-Friendly Lithium-ion Battery Reuse via Intelligent Energy |
| Harvesting |
| Abstract | Battery is an electrochemical cell for providing electric power as |
| needed, and rechargeable battery is a secondary cell that can store |
| excess energy from renewable energy sources. Based on a study |
| performed by Navigant Research, the worldwide revenue of one |
| common type of rechargeable batteries, Lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells, is |
| expected to reach $26 billion US dollars in 2023 due to its wide |
| applications. However, there have been numerous concerns with |
| respect to the availability of Lithium, an element crucial to the |
| production of Li-on batteries. The current processing activities at |
| recycling facilities are limited to the cell destruction for recovering |
| chemical elements in batteries with three shortcomings: a) restricted |
| accessibility: only few facilities available worldwide for element recovery; |
| b) economic non-viability: element recovery cost higher than mining |
| the elements; and c) waste of resources: undifferentiated destruction of |
| both good and bad cells. |
| |
| In this project I uncovered a brand-new method that can be used to sort |
| 18650 Li-ion batteries in large quantity and in real time for harvesting |
| used cells with enough capacity for battery reuse. After a large number |
| (about 170) of battery cells were collected from a battery recycling |
| facility, internal resistance and capacity tests of these cells were |
| conducted as a reference point for comparison with a novel |
| degradation-based method based on X-ray radiographic scanning and |
| digital image contrast computation. The test results indicate that the |
| sorting accuracy of test cells is about 81% with composite indices and |
| 87% with machine learning. The execution time of my algorithm is at a |
| level of 100 milliseconds, making the method a real-time solution for |
| harvesting the remaining energy in good used cells with a potential |
| multi-million-dollar market. This method will potentially be a |
| breakthrough to the lithium battery recycling process and the energy |
| conservation of our eco-system through the sorting process that |
| reduces the need to produce new Li-ion batteries. |
| Bibliography | Pillot, C. Battery market development for consumer electronics, |
| automotive, and industrial: |
| materials requirements and trends. 5th Israeli Power Sources |
| Conference. May 21st, Herzelia, Israel, |
| 2015; 1‐40. |
| Hanisch C, Diekmann J, Stieger A, Haselrieder W . Recycleing of |
| lithium‐ion batteries. In: Handbook |
| of Clean Energy Systems.,2015; 2865‐2888. |