Embedding regulatory storage time limitations into reverse logistics network design for retired lithium-ion batteries under uncertain quantity and quality of returns

The rapid growth of new energy vehicles in China has led to a sharp increase in the number of retired lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), posing serious environmental and safety risks. Unlike conventional recyclables, retired LIBs contain chemically unstable materials and may explode during long-term storage. Accordingly, government regulations impose strict storage time limitations on retired batteries under different conditions. This study innovatively embeds regulatory requirements into a multi-period reverse network design that integrates facility location, inventory, and routing problem (LIRP), while accounting for hybrid uncertainty in both the quantity and quality of returns. To address the limited scale of self-built collection stations operated by third-party recyclers, a multi-type collaborative collection station (CCS) scheme is proposed to enable the full utilization of heterogeneous collection stations embedded within vehicle manufacturers' existing service networks, including 4S dealerships, repair stations, and end-of-life vehicle dismantling stations. A two-stage stochastic–possibilistic hybrid mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is then formulated. To solve this NP-hard problem, we develop a hybrid metaheuristic that combines constructive heuristic with simulated annealing (CH-SA) and incorporates a hybrid adaptive large neighborhood search (HALNS). A real-world case study in Chongqing City, China shows that: (1) the proposed algorithm outperforms both a commercial solver and state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of solution quality and computational time; and (2) compared with a single-type network, the multi-type CCS scheme reduces total network cost by 5.69%.