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ENERGIX-Stort program energi

Norwegian Giga Battery Factories

Alternative title: Norske Gigabatterifabrikker

Awarded: NOK 16.0 mill.

In 2019, the auto making industry sold more than 25 million vehicles. A giga battery factory produces enough batteries for around half a million vehicles, and the need for this sector alone is 50 Giga battery factories. With the stationary grid storage needs for batteries growing equivalently large, 100 giga battery factories are needed in Europe alone by 2030-2035. A giga battery factory produces storage capacity of 30-40 GWh annually and the turnover for each factory is around 3-4 billion USD. The growth of this industry in Norway is now on track to become comparable to the Norwegian oil and gas industry in ten years. By 2025, it is planned to be at least five such factories in operation in Norway. The knowledge need for how to operate and evolve these factories are growing and in the NorGiBatF project, we look at all aspects of this - with emphasis on production technology, buildings requirements, processing needs and opportunities for materials; supported by life cycle analyses.

The project aims at improving the energy footprint of state of the art battery production. This is done by especially targeting energy consumption in the drying of electrode printing and in the process of conditioning air for electrolyte filling. Additionally, LCA and buildings modelling is undertaken to create a holistic understanding of how to develop next generations of giga battery factories. In this approach, and via the 4 PhD and 2 PDRF jointly supervised va NTNU, IFE, Sintef, UCL and TU Braunschweig, the project also aims at transforming existing competence of high excellence but at complimentary topics into research competence for energy efficient battery cell production. Scientific development is achieved by the projects 5 scientific work packages that supports all activities with a main focus on battery production and factory development. Through 3 annual meetings all partners and participants will meet and discuss their results and progress. The topics for these work packages are life cycle assessments of the interaction between value chains and related activities and markets around the giga factory, investigating possibility and energy savings by investigating other solvents for electrode slurries in electrode production, investigating different means for more energy efficient drying and dry air needs in electrolyte filling, modelling and measurement results integration of battery production lines, and modelling buildings energy consumption based on design, temperature, manufacturing machine locations, air flow, heat pump integration, etc. Dissemination will take place by 3 annual project meetings (industrial dissemination), Journals, interaction with other ongoing relevant projects using seminars and works shops, like with the FMEs (HighEff, ZEN and MOZEES), "eit InnoEnergy", meeting with battery recycling projects at KTH (Sweden) and more.

Funding scheme:

ENERGIX-Stort program energi