AI-Driven Resilient Reverse Logistics Network for Electric Vehicle Battery Circular Economy: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach with Multi-Objective Optimization Under Disruption Uncertainty
The rapid growth of electric vehicles (EVs) has created an urgent need for sustainable end-of-life battery management systems. This paper presents a novel AI-driven framework for designing resilient reverse logistics networks that optimize the collection, testing, repurposing, and recycling of EV batteries within a circular economy context. We develop a bi-level optimization model in which the upper level determines strategic facility location decisions under disruption uncertainty, and the lower level employs deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to make dynamic operational decisions including battery routing, State-of-Health (SoH)-based sorting, and inventory management. The model simultaneously optimizes three objectives: total supply chain cost minimization, carbon emission reduction, and resilience maximization. A novel Fuzzy-Robust Stochastic programming approach with Conditional Value-at-Risk (FRS-CVaR) handles hybrid uncertainty from demand variability, supply disruptions, and material price volatility. We propose an enhanced Non-dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm III (NSGA-III) integrated with Proximal Policy Optimization (PPO) for an efficient solution. The framework is validated through a comprehensive case study of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, demonstrating that the AI-driven approach reduces total costs by 18.7%, decreases carbon emissions by 23.4%, and improves supply chain resilience by 31.2% compared to traditional optimization methods. Ablation studies across 10 independent runs with different random seeds confirm the robustness of these findings (95% confidence intervals within ±2.3% for all metrics). Sensitivity analysis reveals that battery SoH prediction accuracy and facility redundancy levels significantly impact network performance. This research contributes to both methodology and practice by providing decision-makers with an intelligent, adaptive tool for sustainable EV battery lifecycle management.