Towards Sustainable Aviation: End-of-Life Scenarios for Lithium-Ion Batteries used in Hybrid Electric Aircraft

The transition to novel aircraft concepts presents a promising way to reduce the environmental impacts of the aviation sector, with plug-in-hybrid electric aircraft emerging as a viable solution. In the short-to-medium term, these aircraft will primarily rely on lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), whose manufacturing process is energy-intensive and highly resource-demanding, leading to significant environmental burdens in terms of climate change and depletion of minerals and metals. This study explores End-of-Life (EoL) scenarios for LIBs used in short-to-medium haul commercial hybrid aircraft, employing the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. It focuses on the production and maintenance phases of the entire aircraft, while the EoL phase is exclusively for the LIB. Maintenance events include inspections, repair and replacement of components. Our findings demonstrate that while recycling LIBs significantly reduces raw material demand and landfill waste, the overall climate change (CC) impact remains significant, which is nearly twice as high as that of a fossil-based aircraft. This is primarily due to the substantial number of battery replacements required throughout the aircraft’s lifetime. Moreover, recycling LIBs instead of using new batteries each time further decreases the impact on climate change over the aircraft’s lifetime. This work highlights the critical need for advanced recycling strategies and robust regulatory frameworks to achieve the sustainability goals in the aviation sector.