Follow the lifecycle of a lithium-ion battery

Read the full story here: Follow The Lifycycle Of A Lithium-Ion Battery.

Overview

Enter the exciting world of lithium-ion batteries!

As the world shifts towards a more sustainable future, the demand for lithium has skyrocketed due to the growth of the electric vehicle and battery industry. This increase in demand has brought about the need to explore and understand the entire lifecycle of lithium-ion batteries, from their raw materials to their disposal.

This story takes a reader on a journey into the world of lithium-ion batteries, where the reader can discover the little-known underground lairs where lithium is found, learn about which countries are producing the most, briefly peak into the alchemy that turns raw lithium into powerful batteries, and explore how they are reborn through recycling after their end of life.

Data Sources and Definitions

• Global Lithium Reserve and production. U.S. lihtium imports - United States Geological Society.
  • The data includes all identified global lithium reserve. The numbers are from USGS U.S. Geological Survey, Minneral commodity summaries 2023. The original report can be found here.
  • Data analysis can be found in the data folder under file name global_lithium_reserves.csv
• Lithium-ion battery recycling
  • Data is from a presentation by Linda Gaines, Transportation Systems Analyst of Energy Systems and Infrastructure Anaysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory. The presentation was made in June 2022 at International Meeting on Lithium Batteries.
  • Data can be found in the data folder under file name recycled.csv.

Tools and Softwares

• I used Google Earth Pro to visualize a lithium mine in the United States and to explain the process of lithium mining and evaporation process.
• I used pandas to explore and analyze data.
• I used ggplot, matplotlib, Rawgraph, Datawrapper and Illustrator to create and edit graphs.
• I used ai2html to export data as svg. I used scrollama to create a scrollytelling experience using ai2html output.
• I used Adobe Illustrator and After Effects to create a header animation of a lithium-ion battery.

Folders

The data folder includes all notebooks for data cleaning and analysis. The visuals folder inside doc folder contains all illustrator files used for the story.

Contact

Please reach out to mk4672@columbia.edu with any questions or concerns.