UKBIC collaboration reduces battery manufacturing set up times and waste

The Nextrode project has deepened its collaboration with the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) on electrode manufacture, with a key focus on how electrode slurry rheology (the flow properties of a semi-liquid mixture of powders and solvent as it is coated on the current collector) changes when mixed at different scales and volumes, from the laboratory through to production.

Typically, organisations that are developing electrodes will manufacture and test electrodes at small scale before scaling up to a manufacturing environment. However, the scaling is far more complex than simply increasing the volume. To address these complexities, Nextrode research led to an Industry Fellowship headed by Dr Carl Reynolds at the University of Birmingham, alongside Professor Emma Kendrick (Birmingham) and Dr Helen Walker at UKBIC.

The Industry Fellowship successfully transferred key knowledge in electrode slurry characterisation and modelling between the two teams, which allowed UKBIC to establish new, efficient and targeted in-house rheometry facilities. This enabled UKBIC to be able to interpret important data, such as slurry stability, in line with manufacturing requirements. UKBIC also implemented improved numerical simulations to predict electrode coating parameters, addressing the challenges that arise when scaling from lab tests to full production. These new capabilities are now available to support UKBIC’s customers, each with a different electrode formulation, and have led to reduced set-up times and scrap rates at UKBIC. In return, the University of Birmingham has gained insight into the challenges of scalability, which will inform future research in this area.

Image: Diagram of the electrode coating process. Courtesy of UKBIC.

Case study published December 2024.