LoCoTroP

LoCoTroP – Low cost dry coating of battery electrodes for energy efficient and environmentally friendly production processes

Funding authority: BMBF

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Project overview:
The LoCoTroP project involves the development of an innovative production technology for battery electrodes with a dry coating process. With equivalent electrochemical performance, this process results in a significant reduction of production costs, both through lower investment costs for the production equipment, higher throughput speeds and the elimination of solvents in operation. The latter as well as the considerable energy saving in the process by omission of the dryer operation by more than 90 % leads to a considerable saving of resources in the cell production, to the reduction of the environmental pollution and to simplified environmental legal approval procedures for battery factories.

Figure 1: Detailed view of the radial blade powder processor for high-intensity powder pretreatment

Objectives and tasks of the iPAT:

• Production of dry mixtures as a preliminary stage for the dry coating step (anode / cathode)
• Dry dispersion of conductivity additives and formation of a homogeneous conductivity network by process-related distribution of conductivity additives
• Stabilization of newly created surfaces by means of suitable stabilization additives in the low mass percentage range
• Systematically single and multi-component treatment under the aspect of binder control
• Preparation of a carbon black/binder matrix and its deposition on the active material surfaces
• Detailed physical and electrochemical analysis for model-based description of the process-structure-property relationships

 
Project partners:
Landshut University of Applied Sciences, Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA