arXiv · 2407.00864
BattOpt: Optimal Facility Planning for Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling
Abstract
The electric vehicle (EV) battery supply chain will face challenges in sourcing scarce and expensive minerals required for manufacturing and in disposing of hazardous retired batteries. Integrating recycling technology into the supply chain has the potential to alleviate these issues; however, players in the battery market must design investment plans for recycling facilities. In this paper, we propose a multistage stochastic optimization model for computing minimum cost recycling capacity decisions, in which retired batteries are recycled and recovered materials are used to manufacture new batteries. We transform EverBatt, a leading evaluation framework for battery recycling cost and environmental impact, into a prescriptive decision-making tool for determining optimal investment strategies. Our model is a separable concave minimization subject to linear constraints, a class for which we describe a finitely convergent global optimization algorithm based on piecewise linear approximation that solves up to 14x faster than comparable algorithms. We propose an equivalent reformulation of the model that eliminates variables by introducing integrality constraints, drastically reducing solve times. To produce a set of operational scenarios, we generate time-series projections for new battery demand, retired battery supply, and material costs, leveraging state-of-the-art econometric models. We apply our model to compute optimal investment plans and quantify the impact of optimal decision-making: optimal investment can reduce battery manufacturing costs by 22% and environmental impacts by 26%. We measure the operational benefits of different recycling technologies and demonstrate how high uncertainty motivates greater investment in recycling capacity. Finally, we analyze the impact of policy instruments to reveal key insights on the efficacy of capacity grants and production credits.
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Matthew Brun, Xu Andy Sun. 2024-07-01. BattOpt: Optimal Facility Planning for Electric Vehicle Battery Recycling. https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.00864
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