Impacts of recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries on environmental burdens

A well-designed recycling process of spent lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) should not only own high recovery efficiency but also be environmentally benign. Most of the recycling of spent LIBs reported exhibited good products recovery, however, the environmental burdens caused by the recycling techniques were far less concerned. In this way, the environmental burdens of the recycling process are specifically addressed in recent years. In this chapter, we gave a systematic overview of this issue, including potential risks of spent LIBs, the assessment methodology and evaluation results of environmental burdens of spent LIBs, the discussion on the environmental impact of recycling process and the approaches for designing an environmentally benign recycling process.