PowerCo SE is planning to introduce a totally new manufacturing course of in its battery cell manufacturing crops in Europe and Northern America.The brand new know-how will considerably enhance effectivity and sustainability in quantity battery cell manufacturing.
A subsidiary of Volkswagen Group and primarily based in Salzgitter, Niedersachsen, the battery firm goals to industrialize the so-called Dry Coating process. The know-how permits a lower in power consumption of about 30 p.c, inside exams have already confirmed profitable. Along with German printing machine specialist Koenig & Bauer AG, PowerCo will additional develop and industrialize the Dry Coating process.
Thomas Schmall, Group Board Member for Expertise at Volkswagen AG and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PowerCo SE: “Applied sciences like Dry Coating showcase PowerCo’s technological prowess. Now we have the required know-how and the fitting consultants to take cell manufacturing to a brand new degree and supply vital value benefits to our prospects. Our goal is to determine an industrial manufacturing of sustainable and inexpensive batteries.”
To attain this aim, PowerCo and Koenig & Bauer have signed a Joint Growth Settlement. Collectively they may develop a curler press for powder coating electrodes at massive industrial scale. The Dry Coating process permits manufacturing electrodes with out wet-coating and subsequently drying them at excessive prices. With the brand new process, essentially the most energy-intensive a part of cell manufacturing and using chemical solvents are now not required. PowerCo is already testing and optimizing the know-how in a pilot line in certainly one of its laboratories in Northern Germany. As a printing specialist, Koenig & Bauer will develop a machine for the commercial powder coating.
In response to PowerCo estimates, the brand new know-how has the potential of saving about 30 p.c of power in addition to 15 p.c of ground house required and can due to this fact save lots of of hundreds of thousands of Euros every year. Frank Blome, CEO of PowerCo SE: “What the solid-state cell is to the product, Dry Coating is to manufacturing – an actual sport changer. If scaled efficiently, it is going to give us a novel place available on the market and particular aggressive benefits.”
The electrodes (cathode and anode) are the “centerpiece” of the battery cell defining power density and battery efficiency. In trendy industrial electrode manufacturing, the battery supplies are combined with components and liquid solvents to a slurry. Afterwards, they’re coated onto foils of copper or aluminum, then dried and calendered.
PowerCo’s Dry Coating process permits to calender the powdery primary supplies immediately onto the foil, just like a printing process. In consequence, two of 4 course of steps in electrode manufacturing turn into out of date. The powder coating may be utilized onto the foil in an especially advantageous and even method, the ensuing layer is about as skinny as a hair. This ensures wonderful spatial power density and an extended life cycle, whereas enhancing the fast-charging capacity of the battery.
The brand new know-how reduces ground house required by 15 p.c – an infinite saving potential. Per constructing block of an everyday Gigafactory with a manufacturing capability of 20 GWh, 4 parallel coating and drying traces may be saved, equaling an space of seven.000 sq. meters. In consequence, the outside size of the plant may be decreased by about 100 meters. Not having to function the energy-intensive drying furnaces and suction techniques will save power equal to the annual consumption of 40,000 personal households.
Moreover, using chemical solvents that must be laboriously recycled at excessive power prices in silo-like towers exterior the crops is now not vital.
Because the oldest producer of printing presses on this planet, Koenig & Bauer presents the trade’s largest product portfolio. Core competency of our associate is the manufacturing of technologically modern and cost-efficient printing techniques. The brand new processing know-how is to exit improvement stage on the finish of 2024. For the time after, we now have agreed on unique rights. The contractual particulars are confidential and there have additionally been made separate agreements. Estimated begin of manufacturing is 2026/2027. “Our crops are designed for fast and straightforward retrofits. In whole, we now have anticipated about 30 foreseeable improvements in merchandise and manufacturing, so we’re in a position to regulate our crops to all related new processes as quickly as they enter the market”, says PowerCo’s Chief Operation Officer Sebastian Wolf.
Jun 19, 2023