Environmental Life Cycle Assessments of Emerging Anode Materials for Li-Ion Batteries-Metal Oxide NPs Zahra Padashbarmchi, a Amir Hossein Hamidian, a Nematolah Khorasani, a Mahmood Kazemzad, b Annie McCabe, c and Anthony Halog c a Department of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, P.O. Box 31585-4314, Karaj, Iran; a.hamidian@ut.ac.ir (for correspondence) b Department of Energy, Materials and Energy Research Center, P.O. Box 14155-4777, Tehran, Iran c School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Management, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia Published online 24 August 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ep.12148 Lithium ion batteries are widely used to meet ever- growing energy demands. They are also considered as energy storage devices to decrease the concerns about limited energy sources and associated environmental issues by displacing a large fraction of gasoline use in HEV and PHEV. Due to these concerns, intensive research on alternative energy conversion and storage systems with high efficiency, low cost, and envi- ronmental benignity has been stimulated worldwide. Recently, nanostructured 3d-metal oxides MO x (M 5 Cu, Fe, Co, etc.) have been widely studied as anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to their high energy capacity. Electrodes synthesized by Fe, Co, or Cu have more lithium-ion storage capacity (over 600 mAh/g) compared to the commercial electrodes synthesized by graphite (about 372 mAh/g). The life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is utilized in order to identify environmental hotspots and aid in directing design towards regenerative and environmen- tally sustainable product design and process development. The main aim of this study is to investigate environmental effects of different lithium-ion batteries with different metal oxides as anode active material. The life cycle assessment results showed that metal oxides like Iron oxide can be a promising anode material due to their much higher energy density. In the production phase, the most important stage is production of NMP (N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone, an organic sol- vent in electrode preparation), for batteries with graphite and anode active material production for batteries with cop- per oxides. VC 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 34: 1740–1747, 2015 Keywords: lithium-ion batteries, environmental life cycle assessment, anode materials, metal oxide nanoparticles INTRODUCTION Lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries have been considered as a promising technology for energy storage in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and electric vehicles with the aim of reducing air pol- lution caused by transportation [1]. There are many studies that have worked on developing different materials as anode electrode for Li-ion batteries. Among the promising anode materials, CuO NPs, Co 3 O 4 NPs, and Fe 2 O 3 NPs have attracted a great deal of attention because of their high theoretical capacity of 674 mAh/g [2], 890 mAh/g [3,4], and 1007 mAh/g [5–7], respectively. Due to the environmental challenges to create more sustainable products and services, conducting comprehensive environmental assessments prior to their mass production is a must. Life cycle assessment is an environmental assessment tool that is able to assess the environmental impacts associated with a product or service through four main phases: goal and scope and functional unit definition, life cycle inventory analysis, impact assess- ment, and life cycle interpretation [8]. There are several LCA studies on Li-ion batteries and comparing them to the other batteries. Most of them considered graphite as anode active material of Li-ion battery. This kind of studies include reports by [9] in which a comparative study was done based on dif- ferent solvents (NMP and water) in cell configuration with LiFePO 4 as cathode and graphite as anode in Li-ion batteries. Also, research by Ellingsen et al. [10] was conducted on the cradle-to-gate of a Li-ion battery with Li(Ni x Co y Mn z )O 2 cath- ode and graphite as anode for electric vehicles which pre- sented environmental burdens of the proposed battery within 13 impact categories. In a study [11], a Li-ion experi- mental battery with cathode material of LiNi 1/3 Co 1/3 Mn 1/3 O 2 compared to a nickel–metal hydride experimental battery with anode material of NdMg 12 1 200%Ni alloy was analyzed that the LCA results showed that nickel–metal hydride battery has higher environmental impacts, especially in terms of environmental impact of human health, comparing to the proposed Li-ion battery. Environmental impacts of different types of batteries were investigated in Bossche et al.’ study [12]. They reported that lead–acid, nickel–cadmium, and nickel–metal hydride batteries have higher impacts than that of lithium-ion and sodium–nickel chloride batteries. Yu et al. [13] also reported that life cycle environmental impacts of two studied batteries (Li-ion battery with a new cathode and nickel–metal hydride battery with a new anode) decrease by increasing the cycle number up to 200 and also by increasing the recycle rate. Sullivan et al. [14] in a study on available life cycle inventory data for cradle-to-gate environmental VC 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environmental Progress & Sustainable Energy (Vol.34, No.6) DOI 10.1002/ep 1740 November 2015