Carbon footprint of Li-Oxygen batteries and the impact of material and structure selection

• DOI: 10.1016/j.est.2023.106684
• Publication Date: 2023-01-20T00:02:18Z
• Authors: Melodie Chen-Glasser; Amy E. Landis; Steven C. DeCaluwe
• Keywords: Carbon Footprint; Lithium battery; Battery pack

High energy density lithium-O2 batteries have potential to increase electric vehicle driving range, but commercialization is prevented by technical challenges. Researchers proposed electrolytes, catalysts, and binders improve the battery capacity reduce fade. Novel design, however, not always consistent with reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Optimizing design using solely electrochemical metrics ignores variations environmental impacts of different materials. The lack uniform reporting practices further complicates such efforts. This paper presents commonly used materials along their GHG We use LCA methodology estimate emissions for five designs: (i) without catalyst, (ii) (iii) carbon-less binder-less, (iv) anode protection, (v) carbon-less, binder-less gold catalyst. work highlights knowledge gaps LCA, provides a benchmark quantify composition impacts, demonstrates associated certain designs laboratory-scale batteries. Predicted range from 10–70 kg CO2 equivalent (kg CO2e) −1 battery, 60–1200 CO2e kWh−1, 0.15–21 km−1 travel, if replacement considered.