Film title: Key Technology Battery A Global Challenge for German Engineering Companies Length: 14:28 Format: 1080-i/50 : Project No.: 11_0048 Webbox-ID: 318 TC Text 00.01 Resource depletion and key climate goals call for sustainable technological changes worldwide. 00.11 The global mobile future lies in electric vehicles. With the energy turnaround future power supply depends on renewable energies. 00.21.This change is both a challenge and an opportunity for innovative German technology solutions. How quickly e-mobility, wind, water and solar power will successfully prevail mainly depends on one key technology: energy storage systems the battery. 00.42 Long gone are the days when a car battery had only one function 00.51 And long gone are the days when batteries were too big, too heavy and too inefficient and thus unattractive for e-cars. Today s battery technology stands for smaller, lighter, stronger and safe. A development due to lithium-ion technology.
01.06 A battery cell consists of several layers of thin foils. There are three of them: the cathode, mostly made of aluminium foil with lithium-metal-oxide coatings on top; the separator, a sheet of plastic or ceramic material, and finally the anode, a copper foil coated with a thin film of graphite. 01.23 The three layers are packed with a hermetically sealed casing. 01.27 A liquid between the layers, called electrolyte, makes sure that charged particles can move inside the battery cell. This way, electrical energy can be stored -- or accumulated - - that's why a rechargeable battery is called "accumulator". In a battery pack several of these cells are mounted to a block. 01.46 Rechargeable batteries can be found within many of the portable devices we use everyday. Mobile phones, cameras or laptops, it is always a lithium-ion battery that ensures reliable power supply. 02.03 Their advantages: high energy density and great efficiency with small sizes and low weights. 02.09 For today the layers of accumulators are as thin as paper. These advantages make lithium-ion batteries the number one in battery technology for e-vehicles. 02.20 However, lithium-ion batteries have to meet much more demanding requirements than consumer electronics. They have to last the life span of the car not only the 2 years of mobile phones and endure thousands of charge, extreme temperature fluctuations, but also survive car crashes. These requirements still have their price: the battery accounts for about half of the total cost of a e-vehicle
02.46 A closer look at the production of high-capacity lithium-ion batteries reveals the reasons. Many production steps in exactly the right order are necessary. At the beginning we have the production of the coating mass. Followed by the coating of the film sheets for both anode and cathode. 03.16 Decisive for the quality: meticulous material testing, a step that is still carried out by hand. 03.24 After the cutting and material testing, films and layers of the battery cell are assembled; this production step is fully automated. The next step requires manual work again. The preparations for the filling with electrolyte need a dry clean room environment, controlled fully automatically. Afterwards, the battery cell is hermetically sealed. During further production steps, the battery cells are grouped and get their housing. 03.49 03.56 Inside we have the battery management: sensor technology and microelectronics that control the state of the battery. The charge cycles provide constant operating temperatures. The last working step is the formation. The battery is charged for the first time. Before putting it into use the battery must be stored for about one month. Cost-oriented optimisation of the whole production chain is our major challenge. 04.22 Statement Dr. Eric Maiser Productronic / : Reducing battery costs is the key to success in terms of customer acceptance, particularly when it comes to electromobility. High-performance batteries remain very expensive, mainly because of the production process that lacks integrated inline processing, and integrated automation. We have to succeed in starting mass production. That's the only way to cut costs. In this context, engineering and automation technologies
are decisive factors. Innovation within production is the key competence of the German engineering sector. 04.58 In the development of cost-effective full production lines for lithium-ion batteries German engineers are able to benefit from a broad range of intelligent solutions and highperformance machine modules they had designed for other sectors where they paved the way for the successful implementation of large-scale production. 05.23 Statement Stefan Schiller : Faced with similar challenges, the German engineering industry has proved that it is capable of great achievements, namely in the photovoltaic sector. The processes are similar in many ways and by implementing our experiences we will be able to make major contributions when it comes to higher production volumes and significant cost reduction, in production as well as in production development. 05.49 The scientific community supports the engineering sector in its efforts. To this end factory planner Dr Rudolf Simon and his team enter a virtual world. On the PC, they develop concepts for the planning and the construction of lithium-ion battery factories. All steps in series production are connected on a modular basis from the production of the coating paste to the formation of the battery cell. The entire production and process technologies are integrated into the building infrastructure. 06.21 Statement Dr. Rudolf Simon / M+W Group Well coordinated manufacturing processes guaranty top quality lithium-ion batteries. We coordinate the cooperation between the various plant manufacturers that are best suited for the planned production line.
06.35 At the Karlsruhe based Institute for Technology Dr. Andreas Gutsch has put together a team of experts. More than 200 experts work on developments around electro mobility and battery technologies. 06.51 O-TON Dr. Andreas Gutsch / Comptence E / KIT We are working with batteries in the field of total system studies, that means we develop from the chemistry to the finished battery system. We have pooled our knowledge at KIT, in a specific place, in a specific form of organisation. We consider technological developments as well as the possibilities of cost-efficient production, including new production technologies for new batteries. 07.14 The team around professor Hahn, for example, systematically analyses the various materials with incredible technical effort using a ultra-high-vacuum-intallation in order to find the best paste for the coating of electrodes and the separators, 07.31 At the Institut für Thinfilmtechnologie scientists address the problem how to improve speed and quality of the coating procedure, the coating of films, within the production process. For their research they use a Development Coater, a device that is used in industrial production processes and a great advantage: 07.56 Statement Dr. Philipp Scharfer TFT / KIT: As we are working with professional production equipment we can implement the results from the pilot-installation in our lab directly into the industrial production process. 08.09 The goal of such a practical development work: increasing productivity and reducing reject rates with the eventual aim of significant cost cuts in the process chain. 08.24 Ester Ruprecht of the expert team focuses on extremely thin and highly sensitive coating
films. Even the slightest error can destroy the expensive material. The scientist is seeking for methods that enable machines to handle these films. For example in order to align them for high-precision stacking of layers. Or to enable robot arms to grasp the films and pass them to the next processing station without causing damage. 09.00 It is not a surprise that the Karlsruhe team focuses on the production of battery cells: it offers an enormous savings potential. Cell production accounts for nearly 50 % of battery costs. The range of possibilities to cut costs by improving production technologies is accordingly very broad. 09.21 But the developers with K I T work on other areas of the battery production chain as well. They focus not only on finding solutions to optimize the battery- management but also concentrate on the formation, the first charging and leak testing, tests that track down possible unwanted power losses of batteries. 09.41 O-TON Thomas Blank IPE / KIT : The formation takes a minimum of 24 hours, the leak testing 28 days. This is, of course, a considerable amount of time, we have to store the finished, marketable cell for nearly one month which unnecessarily ties up company capital. If we were able to reduce the time by 50 % through new developments in the production of cells, through optimised production steps we would be able to reduce the production costs of batteries considerably. 10.16 Many important innovations and developments in production technology came from the ranks of the engineering sector itself as for example: 10.23 Laser technology The cutting of the coated films with laser technology guarantees a consistently high quality Thus we avoid waste which saves production costs and makes the finished product
cheaper 10.40 Laser technology, however, is not only able to do the cutting but also to make precise and long-lasting material connections. Thus substantial improvements could be achieved in the production of batteries: 10.53 For example in the production of battery cells 11.00... when welding and sealing the battery housing hermetically. 11.07 Statement Peter Leibinger / TRUMPF, Member of the Board In our opinion, battery is an ideal example that shows that it is not enough to develop only the technology of a product but it is necessary to develop the production technology, too. The laser addresses many unsolved problems and we believe that we can contribute to establishing a deterministic process in battery production by producing high quality batteries in large numbers and at controllable costs and the costs definitely are the major problem. 11.37 Optimised machine modules can contribute to cutting costs in the production of batteries at any point of the process chain. But there is another important factor for a successful large-scale production: 11.52 The magic word is automation. Automation makes sure that the individual machines and plants match each other perfectly and work together smoothly. 12.05 Statement Josef Schindler / Siemens AG, Industry Automation With our portfolio we are able to develop integrated automation concepts together with our clients. The aim is to pave the way for mass production at the price required by the market. In this context we rely on the know how of related industries in order to develop
integrated automation concepts. That means, for example, that we pool the process data from the entire production in order to identify and to create improvement potentials. 12.43 Automation experts at Siemens want even more: They have designed a Digital Factory that contains all stations and modules that are necessary for a specific manufacturing process. The factory could boost the development of future automation processes. The vision behind this idea: 13.04 Statement Josef Schindler / Siemens AG, Industry Automation I start developing a product and at the same time I am able to design and to simulate the production line. One major advantage is that I m immediately in a position to simulate faults and thus I'm able to increase quality just by avoiding these faults. Another very positive effect is that we have enormous time savings during the boot-up in real production. All in all we expect time savings of up to 50 % between the idea and the finished product. 13.42 It is still a vision, but it could soon - according to the developers contribute to making battery production cheaper and more efficient. 14.57 The German engineering industry is in cooperation with scientists and battery manufacturers paving the way for significant optimizations of production technologies. Thus the sector is contributing considerably to the success of electro-mobility and the shaping of a new future. 14.28 - END-