Project description
Producing greener lithium–ion batteries
Electric vehicles depend on lithium–ion batteries for sustainable, emission-free driving power. However, the process to manufacture them is high-energy and environmentally harmful. The EU-funded greenSPEED project aims to create more sustainable electrode and cell manufacturing that doesn’t emit any volatile organic compounds. To do this, it will develop a new battery cell based on Ni-rich NMC which can be manufactured with dry electrode coating, removing any need for casting solvents or energy intensive drying. Anode manufacturing will rely on microwave-assisted plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition, which can deposit silicon directly on copper using locally produced silane gas. Researchers expect the greenSPEED cell to increase energy density by 69 % while reducing energy consumption and costs compared to current cells.
Objective
Lithium-ion technology is the means to greener and more sustainable mobility and other mobile applications, but the process of cell manufacturing is still energy consuming and using environmentally harmful substances. The greenSPEED project offers solutions for new sustainable electrode and cell manufacturing processes with reduced energy consumption, lower carbon footprint and ZERO Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) emissions.
To that aim, the project main target is developing a battery cell comprised of electrodes manufactured by innovative dry processes. Our composite cathode, based on Ni-rich NMC, is to be manufactured by scalable roll-to-roll dry electrode coating process, that fully removes the use of casting-solvents and eliminates the need of energy-intense drying-, condensate and transportation process required in state-of-the-art electrode fabrication. The greenSPEED high-capacity pure-silicon anode is to be manufactured taking full advantage of our innovative process based on Microwave-Assisted Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (MW-PECVD), which deposits porous silicon directly on the copper current-collector starting from locally produced silane gas (SiH4). Moreover, the use of advanced modelling and simulation techniques including digital twins, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are to be employed to predict and optimise cell performance in early development stages, support the cell production process by virtually assessing the influence and importance of production parameters and thus minimising the number of experiments and to accelerate electrode production optimisation steps. The greenSPEED cell aims at increasing energy density (+69%) while reducing energy consumption (-32%) and costs (-21%) of production as compared to state-of-the-art Li-ion cells. The concepts here proposed have been already demonstrated at TRL 2/3 with the aim of reaching TRL 5/6 by the end of the project.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineering
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryvolatile organic compounds
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcoating and films
- natural scienceschemical sciencesinorganic chemistrymetalloids
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencemachine learning
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-RIA - HORIZON Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
8010 Graz
Austria
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.