Waste electric vehicle battery recycling technology evaluation using a multi-criteria decision making framework

The selection of appropriate recycling technology is of crucial importance in the management of waste electric vehicle battery recycling to ensure economic, social and environmental benefits. A scientific, systematic and efficient approach is needed to select the optimal used electric vehicle batteries recycling technology. This is due to intensifying market competition and the increasing complexity of recycling technology evaluation. Traditional evaluation methods struggle to consider multiple indicators comprehensively, and they are also limited in terms of weight allocation and handling unstructured information. As a result, exploring scientific and systematic recycling technology evaluation methods has become particularly important. To address recycling technology evaluation issues, the multi-criteria decision-making method is an option to consider. However, to our knowledge, there is currently little literature available on the selection of recycling technologies for end-of-life electric vehicle batteries. The aim of this paper is therefore to adopt an integrated multi-criteria decision-making framework to address this research gap. To this end, this paper proposes an integrated method for evaluating used electric vehicle battery recycling technology by combines the best-worst method (BWM) with fuzzy axiomatic design (FAD). Specifically, this study used the BWM method to determine the criteria weights, applied the FAD method to comprehensively rank and evaluate the recycling technologies, and verified the effectiveness of the proposed method via a case study. The research results show that the criterion weight has a significant impact on the ranking of recycling technologies, and allocating weights reasonably can significantly reduce the risk of an unsuccessful evaluation. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis indicates that the method remains stable under various conditions, thereby demonstrating its reliability in practical applications. The proposed BWM-FAD method provides a systematic and scientific evaluation tool for selecting optimal recycling technologies, aiding enterprises in making optimal decisions in complex technological environments.