Dingsheng’s battery-foil LCA: connecting supplier information with aluminium backgrounds
A battery-foil production inventory records factory inputs, but upstream environmental information may be less complete. Dingsheng’s published LCA report for one tonne of lithium-battery aluminium foil retains available supplier carbon-footprint declarations and uses relevant factors from the China Aluminium Industry High-Quality LCA Carbon Footprint Database 1.0—HiQLCD 1.2.0 for part of the aluminium background, supporting a product assessment for customer environmental-information requests.
Case at a glance: one tonne of foil, assessed to the factory gate
19,200 is the reported short-term climate-change result under the stated method and boundary. It is neither a complete battery footprint nor HiQLCD’s independent contribution. Source: report p. 25, Table 11.
Customer environmental-information requests start with, but extend beyond, the factory inventory
The report provides results for completing a customer LCA reporting form. It assesses aluminium foil for lithium batteries, covering raw-material acquisition and factory manufacturing. Subsequent cell or pack production, use and end of life fall outside this cradle-to-gate assessment.
Production records provide material, energy and activity quantities. Translating those quantities into product impacts also requires backgrounds for aluminium feedstocks, electricity, fuels and other inputs. Available supplier information and remaining data gaps need distinct treatment, rather than replacing every input with one generic factor.
Where are supplier declarations retained, and where are databases used?
The report distinguishes aluminium-ingot sources explicitly. A RUSAL carbon-footprint declaration is used for the corresponding supplier material, while other ingots without such declarations use a factor from the Chinese aluminium database. For coils, the ingot factor and forming background are listed separately, with the latter sourced from ecoinvent 3.10.
Source: report p. 15, Table 10. These are model-input sources, not directly comparable supplier emissions-reduction results. Numerical precision follows the original report.
HiQLCD supports the selection of background factors for part of the aluminium feedstock in this study. Factory inventories, supplier declarations, other databases and modeling assumptions together form the assessment. The report does not establish that HiQLCD covers every foil-production process or quantify how the total would change under a different database configuration.
| Input | Source used in the report |
|---|---|
| RUSAL ingots with a declaration | Supplier declaration: 6.8 t CO₂e/t |
| Other ingots without a declaration | China Aluminium Industry Database 1.0—HiQLCD 1.2.0: 12.8644 kg CO₂e/kg |
| Ingot component of coil inputs | Same database: 12.86441 kg CO₂e/kg ingot |
| Coil-forming background | Proxy process selected in the report from ecoinvent 3.10 |
What the results show: raw-material acquisition dominates the short-term climate result
The reported short-term climate-change result is 19,200 kg CO₂ eq per tonne of foil. Figure 5 assigns approximately 17,500 kg CO₂ eq to raw-material acquisition and 1,660 kg CO₂ eq to product manufacturing. The larger raw-material result directs further analysis toward metal sourcing and upstream data, alongside manufacturing electricity and fuels.
Report p. 25, Figure 5 and Table 11, using the source’s displayed precision. Rounded components do not add exactly to the displayed total. The raw-material stage is not equivalent to HiQLCD’s contribution.
These results identify data and processes that merit further investigation; they do not document an implemented reduction measure. Evaluating a change in material or energy supply requires comparable scenarios and renewed checks of sourcing shares, processes, yields, allocation and background boundaries.
| Short-term climate-change result | kg CO₂ eq / tonne of foil |
|---|---|
| Raw-material acquisition | 17,500 |
| Product manufacturing | 1,660 |
| Total | 19,200 |
How can the results be used, and which conditions need to be rebuilt?
The transferable approach is to retain available supplier information, match suitable backgrounds to gaps, and document each source. Another foil product requires renewed checks of thickness and specifications, feedstock mix, production energy, processing and losses. This report’s per-tonne result is not a universal factor for battery foil.
The report acknowledges representativeness uncertainty from approximate background processes. The forming proxy used for coils does not constitute process-by-process validation of the actual rolling route. This is a publicly disclosed product LCA study. The report states that critical review is to follow completion according to customer requirements; the available material does not establish that review has been completed or that an EPD has been registered.
Complete the feedstock data for your battery-material study
Start with supplier declarations, sourcing shares and production inventories, distinguishing available information from inputs that still need backgrounds. Then check aluminium-related records against actual specifications and processes, including units, technology, time coverage and boundaries, before discussing suitable versions and delivery formats.
