SPINMATE: D8.1 Sustainability Performance (LCA) and Cost Assessment

This document aims to report the environmental and cost assessment of SPINMATE’s activities. The analysis focuses on the activities conducted in Work Package 3 (WP3) related to the production of the Solid-State Battery (SSB) cell components: anode, cathode, and electrolyte. To comprehensively assess the environmental impacts of the SSB cell components, a life cycle inventory (LCI) was developed based on primary data collected from SPINMATE’s partners with the support of the Digital Data Platform (DDP)- SUNDIAL, which enables the gathering of data safely and confidentially. Since the focus of the SPINMATE project is the pilot-line, a cradle-to-gate approach was considered. The study focused on assessing each cell component production phase individually in order to identify, from the early development stage, environment and cost hotspots. The environmental assessment followed the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodologyaccording to the ISO 14040/10044 standards. The impacts were quantified and characterized using the ReCiPe v1.1 impact method, and Ecoinvent v3.9.1 was the database used. Regarding the environmental assessment, the results indicated that:• The anode production process - lithium (Li) deposition step is the main impact contributor, primarily due to the high consumption of copper (Cu) compared to Li. Energy consumption data is currently unavailable as the specific coating material has not been chosen, which will directly influence the energy requirements. Consequently, the assessment does not include environmental impacts related to energy use;• The cathode wet processing - the main impact contributors are the mixing and the drying steps. The significant impact of the mixing process is mainly due to the materials used in the Cathode Active Material (CAM) NMC811, related to the cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni);• The cathode dry processing – the mixing step is the main impact contributor. This result is mainly due to the consumption of NMC811, more precisely, due to Co and Ni;• The electrolyte production – the main impact contributors are the solubilization and the mixing steps. Solubilization is the main impact contributor in 11 impact categories, followed by mixing. Energy consumption is the main impact contributor for both steps. The cost assessment followed the Material Flow Cost Accounting (MFCA) methodology, which focuses on tracking the material and energy flows and their associated costs throughout the production process, supported by ISO 14051 standards. In this way, the cost assessment is able to pinpoint the main contributors in the process, thus enabling the identification of potential improvement paths. For this, the flows and costs were collected from SPINMATE’s partners, also with the support of DDP - SUNDIAL. In line with the environmental assessment, the chosen boundaries for the cost analysis are also cradle-to-gate, focusing on individually assessing each cell component production phase. The quantification and characterization of the impacts have been carried out using adjusted data from BatPaC 5.1 Databased. In the cost assessment, it was noted that:• The anode production process - the Li deposition step is the main cost contributor, representing 97% of total costs. This can be attributed to the introduction of Li into the system;• The cathode wet processing – the mixing step stands out as the main contributor to total costs, accounting for 90% of it. This is attributed to the utilisation of NMC811 and catholyte materials;• The cathode dry processing – the mixing step is the main contributor to the costs, with contribution of 77%. Other than that, the extrusion step also has an important contribution (22%). These are justified by the introduction of NMC811 and catholyte, respectively;• The electrolyte production – the solubilisation step emerges as the main cost driver, followed by the mixing step. Solubilisation contributes 47% to the total step costs, while mixing accounts for 30%. Both steps are primarily driven by energy consumption. Initially, an analysis of the current State of the Art (SoA) of the potential competing technologies was carried out. For this analysis, China was considered for the baseline, since it is the world's leading manufacturer of batteries. This analysis aimed to identify cost and environmental hotspots that could lead to potential issues, gaps, and risks. Lithium-ion batteries (LIB) with similar chemistry to the SPINMATE were selected for the baseline and an environmental analysis with the same database and method was performed for an adequate correlation with the SoA. Correlating the SPINMATE results with the selected baseline at the cell component level revealed that, in the environmental assessment of cathode production, the active materials (AM), particularly cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni), are the main contributors to the cathode's environmental impact. This commonality was observed both in the SPINMATE’s results and in the SoA. In the case of the cost assessment, the correlation shows that, although the cathode production process contributes significantly to the total cost and is the main contributor in the baseline and in the SoA, in the case of the project results for 1 kg of cathode and 1 kg of anode, the anode has more associated costs.