Life Cycle Assessment for Supporting Eco-Design: The Case Study of Sodium–Nickel Chloride Cells

The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery vehicle chain being one of them. Thus, actions strategies for sustainability batteries need be developed. Since Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) strategic tool evaluating environmental sustainability, this paper investigates its application two configurations sodium–nickel chloride cell (planar tubular), focusing on active material anode, purpose identifying configuration characterized by lowest impacts. results, based “from cradle gate” approach, showed that tubular performs better all impact categories measured except particulate matter, acidification, resource depletion. With nickel main contributor these categories, future sustainable oriented reduction/recovery or use coming from more supply chain. original contribution twofold: (1) enriches number case studies LCAs applied sodium/nickel cells, adding few types cells can found existing scientific literature. (2) results identify hot spots (cell materials used) improving footprint made cells.