Development of sustainable and efficient recycling technology for spent Li-ion batteries: Traditional and transformation go hand in hand

Clean and efficient recycling of spent lithium-ion batteries(LIBs)has become an urgent need to promote sustainable and rapid development of human society.Therefore,we provide a critical and comprehensive overview of the various technologies for recycling spent LIBs,starting with lithium-ion power batteries.Recent research on raw material collection,metallurgical recovery,separation and purification is highlighted,particularly in terms of all aspects of economic efficiency,energy consumption,technology transformation and policy management.Mechanisms and pathways for transformative full-component recovery of spent LIBs are explored,revealing a clean and efficient closed-loop recovery mechanism.Optimization methods are proposed for future recycling technologies,with a focus on how future research directions can be industrialized.Ultimately,based on life-cycle assessment,the challenges of future recycling are revealed from the LIBs supply chain and stability of the supply chain of the new energy battery industry to provide an outlook on clean and efficient short process recycling technologies.This work is designed to support the sustainable development of the new energy power industry,to help meet the needs of global decarbonization strategies and to respond to the major needs of industrialized recycling.

Sustainable Design of Turbofan Engine： A Computer-Aided Design and Finite Element Analysis

A compressive design and analysis of a turbofan engine is presented in this paper. The components of jet engine have been analyzed based on mechanical design concept. An attempt has been to select materials based on sustainability and green design considerations. The energy content （e） of the materials has been one of the parameters for material selection. The choice of material has a substantial impact on cost, manuthcturing process, and the life cycle efficiency. All components nose cone, fan blade, inlet shaft, including compressor has been solid modeled using Siemens NX 11.0 CAD software. The finite element analysis of every component was performed and found safe. A tolerance analysis was performed before assembly of the turbofan engine. A numerical analysis was completed on blade and inlet geometries to determine a more efficient turbofan engine. Thermal analysis was executed oi1 the cone and suitable corrections were made. Finally, the cost and the total energy were estimated to show how much energy is needed to manufacture a turbofan jet engine.

Life Cycle Assessment of Recycling High-Density Polyethylene Plastic Waste

Increasing production and use of various novel plastics products,a low recycling rate,and lack of effective recycling/disposal methods have resulted in an exponential growth in plastic waste accumulation in landfills and in the environment.To better understand the effects of plastic waste,Life Cycle Analysis(LCA)was done to compare the effects of various production and disposal methods.LCA shows the specific effects of the cradle-to-grave or cradle-to-cradle scenarios for landfill,incineration,and mechanical recycling.The analysis clearly indicates that increasing recycling of plastics can significantly save energy and eliminate harmful emissions of various carcinogens and GHGs into the environment.As recycling increases,the need for virgin-plastic production can be greatly reduced.Furthermore,the results of this study may help improve current mechanical recycling processes as well as potential future recycling methods,such as chemical recycling.Concerns about the current recycling/disposal methods for plastics have brought increasing attention to the waste accumulation problem.However,with the current COVID-19 pandemic,plastic accumulation is expected to increase significantly in the near future.A better understanding of the quantitative effects of the various disposal methods can help guide policies and future research toward effective solutions of the plastic waste problem.

Life-cycle analysis of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions of gas-to-liquid fuel pathway from steel mill off-gas in China by the LanzaTech process

The LanzaTech process can convert carbon monoxide-containing gases produced by industries, such as steel manufacturing, into valuable fuel products. The life-cycle analysis （LCA） of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from the LanzaTech process has been developed for a Chinese setting using the original Tsinghua China Automotive LCA model along with a customized module developed principally for the process. The LCA results demonstrate that LanzaTech gas-to-liquid （GTL） processing in China＇s steel manufacturing is favorable in terms of life-cycle fossil energy and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 50% compared with the conventional petroleum gasoline. The LanzaTech process, therefore, shows advantages in both energy-savings and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions when compared with most bio-ethanol production pathways in China.

Closed-loop deep neural network optimal control algorithm and error analysis for powered landing under uncertainties

Real-time guidance is critical for the vertical recovery of rockets.However,traditional sequential convex optimization algorithms suffer from shortcomings in terms of their poor real-time performance.This work focuses on applying the deep learning-based closedloop guidance algorithm and error propagation analysis for powered landing,thereby significantly improving the real-time performance.First,a controller consisting of two deep neural networks is constructed to map the thrust direction and magnitude of the rocket according to the state variables.Thereafter,the analytical transition relationships between different uncertainty sources and the state propagation error in a single guidance period are analyzed by adopting linear covariance analysis.Finally,the accuracy of the proposed methods is verified via a comparison with the indirect method and Monte Carlo simulations.Compared with the traditional sequential convex optimization algorithm,our method reduces the computation time from 75 ms to less than 1 ms.Therefore,it shows potential for online applications.

Cost of non-renewable energy in production of wood pellets in China

Assessing the extent to which all bio-fuels that are claimed to be renewable are in fact renewable is essential because producing such renewable fuels itself requires some amount of non-renewable energy （NE） and materials. Using hybrid life cycle analysis （LCA）--from raw material collection to delivery of pellets to end users--the energy cost of wood pellet production in China was estimated at 1.35 J/J, of which only 0.09 J was derived from NE, indicating that only 0.09 J of NE is required to deliver 1 J of renewable energy into society and showing that the process is truly renewable. Most of the NE was consumed during the conversion process （46.21%） and delivery of pellets to end users （40.69%）, during which electricity and diesel are the two major forms of NE used, respectively. Sensitivity analysis showed that the distance over which the pellets are transported affects the cost of NE significantly. Therefore the location of the terminal market and the site where wood resources are available are crucial to saving diesel.