Optimization of Disassembly Strategies for Electric Vehicle Batteries

Various studies show that electrification, integrated into a circular economy, is crucial to reach sustainable mobility solutions. In this context, the circular use of electric vehicle batteries (EVBs) is particularly relevant because of the resource intensity during manufacturing. After reaching the end-of-life phase, EVBs can be subjected to various circular economy strategies, all of which require the previous disassembly. Today, disassembly is carried out manually and represents a bottleneck process. At the same time, extremely high return volumes have been forecast for the next few years, and manual disassembly is associated with safety risks. That is why automated disassembly is identified as being a key enabler of highly efficient circularity. However, several challenges need to be addressed to ensure secure, economic, and ecological disassembly processes. One of these is ensuring that optimal disassembly strategies are determined, considering the uncertainties during disassembly. This paper introduces our design for an adaptive disassembly planner with an integrated disassembly strategy optimizer. Furthermore, we present our optimization method for obtaining optimal disassembly strategies as a combination of three decisions: (1) the optimal disassembly sequence, (2) the optimal disassembly depth, and (3) the optimal circular economy strategy at the component level. Finally, we apply the proposed method to derive optimal disassembly strategies for one selected battery system for two condition scenarios. The results show that the optimization of disassembly strategies must also be used as a tool in the design phase of battery systems to boost the disassembly automation and thus contribute to achieving profitable circular economy solutions for EVBs.

Recycling Li-Ion Batteries: Robotic Disassembly of Electric Vehicle Battery Systems

This paper presents the application of robotics for the disassembly of electric vehicle lithium-ion battery (LIB) packs for the purpose of recycling. Electric vehicle battery systems can be expensive and dangerous to disassemble, therefore making it cost inefficient to recycle them currently. Dangers associated with high voltage and thermal runaway make a robotic system suitable for this task, as the danger to technicians or workers is significantly reduced, and the cost to operate a robotic system would be potentially less expensive over the robots lifetime. The proposed method allows for the automated or semi-automated disassembly of electric vehicle LIB packs for the purpose of recycling. In order to understand the process, technicians were studied during the disassembly process, and the modes and operations were recorded. Various modes of interacting with the battery module were chosen and broken down into gripping and cutting operations. Operations involving cutting and gripping were chosen for experimentation, and custom end of arm tooling was designed for use in the disassembly process. Path planning was performed offline in both MATLAB/Simulink and ROBOGUIDE, and the simulation results were used to program the robot for experimental validation.