Discarded Disposable Vapes Still Have Batteries Capable of Hundreds of Charge Cycles

According to a study published in the journal Joule on December 12, 2022, the lithium-ion batteries inside disposable vaping devices still retain high capacity performance over hundreds of cycles even after being discarded following a single use.

The analysis, conducted by scientists at University College London (UCL) and the University of Oxford with support from the Faraday Institution, highlights the growing environmental threat posed by increasingly popular disposable vapes, which are not designed to be rechargeable.

“What surprised us was just how long these batteries appeared capable of cycling,” said Paul Shearing, Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering in the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and UCL.

“If you use low charge-discharge rates, you can still see more than 90% capacity retention after over 700 cycles. That is actually quite a good battery. And these batteries are simply being thrown away. They are discarded casually on roadsides.”

Since 2021, disposable vapes have surged in popularity in the UK. One survey found that between January 2021 and April 2022, use of disposable vapes increased 18-fold. Within 15 months, their popularity among 18-year-olds rose from 0.4% to 54.8%. The rapid spread of disposable vapes has created an urgent new waste problem, with around 1.3 million such devices discarded each week in the country.

As a result, about 10,000 kilograms (more than 22,000 pounds) of lithium from vape batteries ends up in UK landfills every year, threatening nearby waterways with contamination from batteries containing nickel, cobalt, and organic solvents.

“From the beginning, we believed that the batteries used in these vapes were most likely rechargeable batteries,” Shearing said, noting that, to his team’s knowledge, no previous research had evaluated how long the lithium-ion batteries in these products could last.

To test their intuition, Shearing and his colleagues removed batteries from disposable vapes under controlled conditions and assessed them using the same tools and techniques they use to study batteries in electric vehicles and other devices.

They examined the batteries under a microscope and used X-ray tomography to map their internal structure and understand the materials involved. By repeatedly charging and discharging them, they determined the batteries’ ability to retain electrochemical performance over time, finding that these batteries could be recharged “sometimes hundreds of times,” Shearing said.

“At the very least, the public needs to understand what type of batteries go into these devices and the need to dispose of them properly,” he said. “Manufacturers should provide an ecosystem for reuse and recycling of vape batteries, and they should also shift by default toward rechargeable devices.”

Shearing and his team are also researching new, more selective battery recycling methods that allow individual components to be recovered without cross-contamination, as well as more sustainable battery chemistries, including lithium-sulfur, sodium-ion, and other post-lithium-ion batteries.

He said that to address challenges across the entire battery supply chain, scientists should consider the battery lifecycle whenever they evaluate any battery application.

“That runs through all the work we do, whether it is vape batteries or batteries going into electric helicopters,” Shearing said. “It is the same way of thinking: we need to fully understand the lifecycle of battery-powered devices.”