Repurpose

Repurpose or Reuse or 2nd Life are all about another use for a battery after it has come to the end of it’s primary intended use.

2nd life of batteries

Second Life of Batteries for Electric Vehicles

What is Second life of Batteries? Batteries have or will have a lifecycle of 10-15 years in Electric vehicles. Batteries need to be replaced in Electric Vehicles as per OEM advice once they fall to between 80% to 70% of their original capacity. But these batteries will have sufficient life left in them for other applications even at 70% to 80% capacity.

The Truth Behind Second-Life Batteries

The elephant in the room is that a large proportion of lithium-ion batteries retired today (many of them are new, never cycled, or used with a state of health (SOH) exceeding 80%) are sent directly to recycling facilities instead of being sold for a second-life application.

This includes new surplus batteries, manufacturing fallout (unused but functional cells and modules), and lightly used batteries.

Despite being cheaper than new batteries, these batteries are largely overlooked for reuse in favour of recycling.

elephant and battery in the room
Yanti repair fieldwork

A Field-Validated Framework That Exposes the Limits of SoH – a module at 78% state-of-health (SoH) is scrapped as end-of-life; after reconditioning, it powers a stationary storage for three more years. Another at 82% SoH fails weeks into revival. Conventional metrics cannot explain the difference.

4R’s Repair, Reman, Repurpose, Recycle

Before moving to the recycling of a battery the following options should be considered:

  1. Repair
  2. Remanufacture
  3. Repurpose
  4. Recycling

This approach can reduce cost, impact on the customer and most importantly the impact on the planet.

Batteries are not emissions and toxic waste free and so the life cycle analysis (LCA) must be considered from cradle to grave.

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