**4. Life Cycle Impact Assessment: Global Warming Potential (LCIA-GWP)**

A GWP of 158 g CO2e is calculated for the entire recycling process of 1 kg of TBs. This implies that the recovery of 171 g of NMC cathode material with the recycling process described here results in the abovementioned GWP (158 g CO2e) or 924 g CO2e for recycling of 1 kg NMC active material with the battery composition shown in Table 1. Figure 5 shows the LCIA, and thus presents the GWP of the entire process for 1 kg of the TBs. The largest share of the GWP is attributable to the water jetting step, which emits 76 g CO2e for the defined functional unit and thus causes 48% of the total process and the lowest share of the GWP, which is 1 g CO2e (<1%), belonging to the packaging and sampling step. The water used for water jetting contributes only a small share (approximately 1.5 g CO2e or 2% of the water jetting step). Two other factors, the electrical energy required for water jetting the electrodes and NaOH (50%), contribute significantly to the GWP with shares of 30 and 41 g CO2e, respectively. In the case of air purification, which is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases with 27% of the whole process, the required electrical energy causes approximately 3 g CO2e (7%) of the GWP, while the remaining 40 g CO2e (93%) is due to the filter medium, which is the activated carbon. The drying oven is powered by electricity, which is why this is fully responsible for the GWP in this process step, with a share of 9% of the whole recycling process. In the packaging and sampling step, there are no emitters of greenhouse gases, except the electrical energy, which leads to a share of 1% of the total process.

**Figure 5.** Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) as the breakdown of the global warming potential according to the process steps of the waterjet-based recycling method for 1 kg of traction batteries.
