US separator company Entek has received a loan of up to $1.2 billion for a new separator plant from the US Department of Energy’s Loan Program Office (LPO).
The cash will finance the building of the new facility in Terre Haute, Indiana, where it will manufacture lithium-ion battery separators for use primarily in electric vehicles (EVs). The company said the first phase of the plant will have 1.4 billion sq. m. of capacity for lithium-ion separators.
The company will be able to customise separators to accommodate numerous EV battery designs and all existing lithium-ion EV battery chemistries, it said. It includes NMC, NCA, LMFP and LFP. Entek is also planning to sell its separators to manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries for energy storage applications.
It plans to be the US’s first end-to-end, domestic supplier of ‘wet process’ battery separators for the North American lithium-ion EV battery market. The project will help US EV battery manufacturers satisfy the Inflation Reduction Act’s domestic content rules under the 30D Clean Vehicle Credit.
