Lithium ion battery production

Recently, new materials and chemistry for lithium ion batteries have been developed. There is a great emphasis on electrification in the transport sector replacing part of motor powered engines with battery powered applications. There are plans both to increase energy efficiency and to reduce the overall need for consumption of non-renewable liquid fuels. Even more significant applications are dependent on energy storage. Materials needed for battery applications require specially made high quality products. Diminishing amounts of easily minable metal ores increase the consumption of separation and purification energy and chemicals. The metals are likely to be increasingly difficult to process. Iron, manganese, lead, zinc, lithium, aluminium, and nickel are still relatively abundant but many metals like cobalt and rare earths are becoming limited resources more rapidly. The global capacity of industrial-scale production of larger lithium ion battery cells may become a limiting factor in the near future if plans for even partial electrification of vehicles or energy storage visions are realized. The energy capacity needed is huge and one has to be reminded that in terms of cars for example production of 100 MWh equals the need of 3000 full-electric cars. Consequently annual production capacity of 106 cars requires 100 factories each with a 300 MWh capacity. Present day lithium ion batteries have limitations but significant improvements have been achieved recently [1-8]. The main challenges of lithium ion batteries are related to material deterioration, operating temperatures, energy and power output, and lifetime. Increased lifetime combined with a higher recycling rate of battery materials is essential for a sustainable battery industry. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.