Undersökning av metoderna för att producera litium-nickel-mangan-koboltoxid-katoder : Analys av representativiteten i databaser för livscykelanalyser

The shift in the automotive industry toward electric vehicles (EVs) is leadingto a rise in demand for EV batteries. One of the most common batteriesare nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) type lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).The cathode accounts for the majority of the carbon footprint (CF) andprice of the cell, consists of four critical minerals. As carbon footprintcalculations for batteries become mandatory in the EU, high-quality life cycleassessment (LCA) databases become more important. As found in this study,the various different production pathways of the metals are currently notcommonly represented in the LCA databases. The only common distinctionis between lithium from brines and from ores. In addition to mappingthe various production pathways, the uncertainty connected to this lack ofrepresentativeness was analysed. For this, carbon footprints from varioussources were collected. Lithium from brines showed the largest variability,followed by nickel. Lithium and cobalt have the largest footprint in absolutenumbers. Manganese showed the lowest variability, as well as the lowest CF,so additional granularity has low priority. As the industry shift to high-nickelcell configurations, nickel contributes more, while less cobalt and manganeseis needed per cell. Thus, this study concludes that more granularity, especiallyin terms of nickel and lithium is needed across the common LCA databases.The need for more granularity for cobalt is less important, but the distinctioninto nickel ores and copper ores should still be easy to implement.