Climate protection and Energiewende are the key topics of the century.
Zero emission electric vehicles and renewable energies are the
promising technologies for a sustainable future.
Powerful electricity storage devices are necessary for this concept to
work.
The new key technology is called batteries, both mobile and
stationary.
They must be more powerful and yet smaller and lighter in weight.
This is made possible by lithium-ion technology.
Lithium-ion technology is a relatively young technology developed
roughly 20 years ago.
The major advantage, for instance, over lead batteries is the fact
that lithium-ion technology produces small, lightweight, powerful
batteries, such as the lithium-ion battery I am showing here.
Its energy content is roughly similar to that of a lead-acid starter
battery, but it is clearly smaller.
We expect that this technology will be advanced massively.
Energy densities will rise and we believe that this will become the
future of electricity storage media.
At the new research factory on campus north of the Karlsruhe Institute
of Technology, 40 institutes with some 800 scientists, among them
material scientists, manufacturing and vehicle engineers or chemists,
are working on the development of lithium-ion batteries.
The name of the project is Competence-E.
Well, the main challenges to be met by new battery systems are these.
They must be safe, they must be of very high quality and, of course,
they must be cost-effective.
Safety is a point which cannot be debated.
Under no circumstances must these batteries create any hazards.
As far as quality is concerned, a distinction must be made between
batteries for the automotive industry and those more suitable for
stationary applications, i.e.
for storing electricity generated by photovoltaic or wind power
systems.
For the costs, naturally, the system must pay for the final user.
Completely new production and integration procedures for lithium-ion
cells are being developed and tested at the research factory.
Here is a guided tour through the stations of the research factory.
A multitude of process steps are required to manufacture lithium-ion
batteries.
You can see some of them here.
First, there is the active material.
This is an example coming from the Institute of Nanotechnology, a
material which can store twice the energy accumulated by current
materials.
For electric vehicles, this will mean that their operating range would
double.
This material is processed into a paste together with additives.
Also, the production of that paste is an area of scientific research.
We are engaged in together with the Institute of Mechanical Process
Engineering.
Down here you see a new type of system, a mixer for making pastes of
particularly high quality.
Other scientific challenges come up when the paste is to be spread on
a metal foil.
This is where the rheology of defect-free coating of metal foils many
kilometers long plays a role.
These are problems we study together with the Institute of Thermal
Process Engineering.
That institute, for instance, can develop these novel coating and
drying systems and market them together with German industries.
In this way, these electrodes can be produced very fast and at low
cost.
Every lithium-ion battery needs a sophisticated electronic system
monitoring its operation.
Together with the Institute for Data Processing and Electronics, we
develop these PCBs for particularly powerful batteries.
And this is where all the ends meet.
Novel lithium-ion cells with intelligent electronics and particularly
sophisticated module housings we are developing jointly with the
Institute of Product Engineering.
The major challenge in producing foils for accumulators lies in the
need to harmonize exactly all engineering and mechanical processes.
The properties of the accumulator are defined not only by the material
but also by the processing characteristics.
This machine, a calendar, compresses the coated material, in this way
setting its porosity.
The porosity of the material is responsible for ion conduction at a
later stage, which determines the quality of operation of the
accumulator.
The best cell in the world not only must sustain many charging and
discharging cycles and work at temperatures below zero or tropical
temperatures.
The best cell in the world must also be easy to manufacture from raw
materials available and easily obtainable commercially.
Nothing else makes sense for low-cost sustainable technology.
Here at our research factory we are going to build and further develop
new electronic materials, new electrolytes in large cells.
In this way we will qualify the step from the laboratory to industrial
application.
This is the objective of the research factory, producing low-cost
powerful batteries for everyday use.
We are right at the beginning of building up the research factory.
The machines we purchased have been commissioned in the meantime.
Now we can continue regular operation.
We are now developing new cell technologies, improving production
technology in the hope that in 10 years' time we will be able to make
commercial use of the findings we are going to generate over the next
couple of years.
In this way, hopefully, we will have been able to contribute to
developing one of the best cell technologies in the world.