Toward a life cycle inventory for graphite production

Daria Surovtseva, Enda Crossin, Robert Pell and Laurence Stamford

Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2022, vol. 26, issue 3, 964-979

Abstract: Global electrification of mobility and energy storage is driving an unprecedented demand for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) for which graphite is one of the major components. Multiple prior studies have attempted to assess the environmental footprint of LIBs by way of life cycle analysis (LCA), and the poor quality of inventory data on the production of graphite (at various purities) has been highlighted consistently. This work reviews the available inventories used in the assessment of natural and synthetic battery‐grade graphite production, and demonstrates that some upstream, downstream, and peripheral processes—including important processes associated with mining, calcination, and other steps—are often omitted, leading to greatly underestimated impacts. It proposes a new rigid framework for comparing different graphite production routes and a corresponding indicative inventory for synthetic graphite production. This inventory is used to estimate the global warming potential and energy demand of synthetic graphite, yielding results of 13.8 kgCO2‐eq/kg and 45.9 MJ/kg, respectively, suggesting that prior literature may have underestimated these results by a factor of two or more. The work concludes by highlighting the need to evaluate a broader suite of applicable impact categories and to fully account for the full suite of by‐and co‐products in future LCAs.

Date: 2022
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