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Mixing of electrode slurries – shaken, not stirred

April 03, 2023

We are at the beginning of a green-energy renaissance, where battery technologies not only have the potential to supplant fossil-fuel powered vehicles but are expected to account for over half of new vehicles by 2030. This is an especially ambitious goal, given that most of the necessary manufacturing infrastructure needs to be built and the sector is even now reliant on inefficient technology from the 1900s for mixing electrode formulation components before coating conductive foils to form electrodes. Today, industrial planetary mixers for electrode slurry production can contain 3000 L, but nevertheless require upwards of 3h of mixing time and another 1-3 h of cleaning between batches with thousands of machines needed to meet global demand. Manual powder handling by scores of workers in hazmat suits is currently the norm, raising the required factory footprint and cost of manufacture. The Batt-TDS™, a next-generation mixing platform for high-viscosity slurries, changes the paradigm with dust-free powder induction into a continuous stream of liquid and high-productivity slurry mixing (up to more than 5000 L/hour) with as much as a ten-fold reduction in the mixing equipment footprint.

The architecture of lithium-ion batteries employs a bi-continuous network that supports electron and lithium-ion transport in separate channels.

Mixing provides two functions in the preparation of slurries

Dispersal of conductive materials like carbon black, a nanomaterial with extremely high surface area.

Distribution of the conductive material around the major-component active material, 50-200x larger in size.

In the electrode, the conductive material serves as a conduit for electrons, whereas lithium mass transport to and from the active materials takes place via the porous structure between the active material and conductive network by the electrolyte. Cathode active materials like lithium iron phosphate, NMC and NCA, are not especially conductive. Poor dispersal and distribution translate to fewer pathways for electron conduction and thus increased resistivity, potentially requiring more conductive material to solve what is otherwise a process problem, requiring a reduction in the amount of active material that can be used practically. The consequence of poor dispersal is a faster deterioration of cell performance from many charge / discharge cycles due to side reactions in the electrochemical cell, which raise the internal cell resistance over its lifetime. Practically, this would mean needing to carry a larger, heavier battery to compensate for the eventual loss in storage capacity or else the driving range is compromised in the final years of service life.


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