Project ‘InForm’ completed on more efficient battery production

Research teams from four German institutes have successfully completed the ‘InForm’ project after more than three and a half years. The result is an AI-supported process that should allow battery cell properties to be optimised and assessed much earlier than before.

According to the announcement from the Chair of Production Engineering of E-Mobility Components (PEM) at RWTH Aachen University, these processes should also help to make it easier to develop customised battery cells. If the properties can be optimised earlier in the development process, development and production will be easier.

The project partners used AI and physicochemical modelling to specifically intervene in the forming step “to achieve positive long-term effects and ensure a safe process.” According to the chair, the process time was initially reduced by around 50 per cent using a pulse forming protocol and then by a further 20 per cent with the support of AI: ‘This has shown that it is possible to form customised batteries with shorter process times, for example with a view to improved electrical properties or service life, and to develop needs-based procedures more quickly.’

Forming is the final production step of a battery cell, during which the assembled cell is charged for the first time. This is when the solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer forms on the electrodes, which is crucial for the subsequent performance characteristics of the cell – so forming is extremely important for factors such as safety, longevity and performance.

The researchers used electrochemical impedance spectroscopy to observe the resistance of the SEI during formation. “This allows us to draw conclusions about the correct formation of the SEI and the resulting lithium consumption – a quality criterion for both the discharge capacity after formation and for long-term behaviour,” says the project manager at PEM, Tobias Robben: “Instead of only being able to assess production success with the end-of-line test, we can determine battery quality beforehand without any interruption to the process.” In this way, rejects can occur much earlier in the process, which saves considerable time and costs.

“With the help of digitalization and artificial intelligence, the production of lithium-ion batteries can be accelerated with process costs decreasing and quality increasing,” says PEM Director Professor Achim Kampker. “Being able to manufacture batteries individually and with automated quality assessment is going to be a key factor in competitive battery production.”

The project was an accompanying project of the ‘Intelligent Battery Cell Production’ (InZePro) competence cluster funded by the German government. The partners of the RWTH Chair of PEM included the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) for Electrochemical Energy Storage at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the Centre for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW) and the Institute for High Voltage Technology and Energy Systems (elenia) at the TU Braunschweig.

pem.rwth-aachen.de

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