Life Cycle Assessment of Laboratory-Scale Battery Production: A Zinc-Ion Coin Cell Case Study

This thesis presents a cradle-to-gate Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the laboratory-scale production of an aqueous zinc-ion battery (AZIB) coin cell. The study investigates the potential environmental impacts associated with experimental battery synthesis and explores the contribution of laboratory-specific activities, which are commonly excluded from battery LCA studies. The assessment is based on a detailed life-cycle inventory constructed primarily from primary data collected during a structured experimental internship at the University of Bologna, where the AZIB coin cell was synthesised. Energy and material flows were measured directly during laboratory activities and complemented with secondary data from literature and the ecoinvent database. The product system includes core cell production processes as well as ancillary laboratory operations, explicitly modelled through three domains: Main, Cleaning, and Disposables, which together define the complete system. The reference flow is one coin cell produced at laboratory scale, and downstream processes such as use phase and end-of-life are excluded. Environmental impacts were evaluated using the ReCiPe 2016 midpoint method implemented in SimaPro. Results show that the environmental profile is largely driven by process-related contributions, particularly electricity consumption and laboratory waste management, rather than by the intrinsic impacts of active materials. Cleaning activities emerge as a dominant contributor in several impact categories, highlighting the relevance of experimental practices. Sensitivity analysis confirms the influence of the stainless-steel cell case and current collector preparation, while Monte Carlo analysis supports the robustness of the main conclusions under inventory uncertainty. Overall, the study demonstrates the applicability and value of LCA as a diagnostic tool for early-stage battery research, supporting environmental awareness during laboratory-scale experimentation.