Slawomir Suchomski, vice president sales Europe at Emerson, explains how easy-to-use automation solutions help component manufacturers ensure consistency and maximise throughput to meet growing market demand.
The rapid expansion of the electric vehicle market saw global demand for lithium-ion batteries reach unprecedented levels in 2024. According to the UK-based consultancy Rho Motion, demand surged by 26% last year compared to 2023, and passed the 1TWh milestone for the first time.
While this is excellent news for battery suppliers, it also puts pressure on component manufacturers to quickly increase production capacity. New lines and plants are being added but manufacturers must also aim to increase throughput from their existing plants.
To enable this, it is critical to tightly control product quality and consistency throughout the manufacturing process. With even the smallest impurities in cathodes, anodes or electrolytes having the potential to cause performance degradation issues, reduced battery lifespan or safety failures, the quality standards set by battery producers must be extremely high.
The onus is therefore on component manufacturers to eliminate batch-to-batch variation, helping to ensure compliance with those stringent quality standards, prevent scrappage and reduce operational costs. Enhancing the amount of process automation in their plants is fundamental in achieving these production goals.
Manual intervention still commonplace
Although battery production is a process-heavy industry, automation has yet to be universally adopted – especially in regions where the industry is still developing – and many aspects of component manufacturing often remain reliant on manual intervention.
There are various reasons why process automation has still to be fully embraced. However, it is often the case that the rapid growth of the industry has produced a lag in workforce training, leaving organisations with a shortage of experienced personnel capable of bridging the gap between process knowledge and automation engineering.
To help manufacturers overcome this challenge, automation technology suppliers have developed smarter and more user-friendly solutions, providing data-driven intelligence and well-designed control capabilities across the component production process.
For example, control systems coordinate the overall process; sensors and measurement devices help to ensure that materials are blended consistently to meet quality standards; and control valves help to manage critical process parameters. Designed to support increased ease-of-use, these automation solutions reduce the burden on inexperienced operators and ultimately help to achieve consistent component quality and increased throughput.
Ensuring batch uniformity and quality
Strictly controlling process conditions and adhering to predefined recipes is essential to achieve uniformity across batches. This can be realised by implementing batch control system software, advanced measurement technology and fluid control valves. Leveraging these solutions provides site- wide production visibility, helping manufacturers achieve a higher level of control and insight into their processes.
Plant control systems provide precise control over critical process parameters such as temperature, pressure, flow and mixing rates. Batch production requires sophisticated sequencing across the plant. Dedicated process control software such as DeltaV™ Batch from Emerson helps to increase throughput while minimising quality risks. Recipe management and execution functionality ensures consistent mixing, leaching and drying steps during production, leading to standardised batches with predefined recipes. Integration with highly accurate sensors and actuators enables precise process variable adjustments, while PID loops and advanced control algorithms maintain optimal process conditions.
The importance of precise measurements
Consistent, in-spec production requires reliable and accurate mass flow, density, level, pH and viscosity measurements. Measurement inaccuracy leads directly to batch variations, failure to meet quality standards, potential for scrappage, and reduced productivity. Coriolis mass flow and density meters provide an ideal solution when measuring viscous liquids and slurry flows, as they provide extremely accurate, repeatable measurements in these applications.
The latest Coriolis meters come equipped with self- diagnostic features to continuously monitor the meter’s performance integrity. This helps to maintain optimal performance and identify potential issues before they affect production.
Coriolis meters support ease- of-use by measuring mass-flow directly, unlike traditional volumetric flow meters, which often require additional calculations to account for changes in temperature and pressure. This eliminates the need for manual adjustments, which can be error-prone, especially for inexperienced operators. Coriolis meters also minimise the need for frequent calibration and integrate easily into control systems.
Level measurements
Continuous monitoring of liquid levels within process vessels prevents variations that could impact component consistency and quality. However, component manufacturing presents some particularly challenging applications for level measurement technologies. For example, in mixing tanks, conditions can be highly turbulent, with varying densities and viscosities, while the presence of vapour can also impact measurement accuracy.
Modern non-contacting radar devices are ideally suited for level measurement applications, being unaffected by these conditions, while eliminating direct contact with the hazardous or corrosive materials, thereby reducing the risk of contamination. By automatically tracking all signal echoes, including those from obstructions in a vessel, the latest radar devices can determine which echo is from the product surface. This ensures measurement reliability and accuracy despite the presence of internal tank obstructions or complex geometries. In addition, these devices support increased ease of use through simple installation, auto-calibration, real-time diagnostics and easy integration with existing control systems.
Measuring pH
The accurate measurement of pH (expressing acidity or alkalinity) during the cathode precursor process is crucial in achieving the desired colloidal structures, which directly impact battery performance. Challenges during this stage include sulphide poisoning, which degrades the quality of the cathode materials, affecting the overall performance of the battery; and the formation of oil layers on sensor tips, which can reduce sensor accuracy and lifespan.
To meet these challenges, manufacturers should select a pH sensor that has been designed for extended life when used in applications with sulphides and oil layers. This will help to ensure the quality of the cathode precursor, improve batch consistency, and reduce pH sensor maintenance and replacement costs.
Measuring pH is also essential within the electrolyte manufacturing process, since the concentration of lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF 6 ) must be controlled to meet quality requirements. This is a challenging measurement because the presence of hydrofluoric acid (HF) can shorten the life of the pH sensor. This can then compromise measurement accuracy, increase sensor replacement costs, and reduce electrolyte quality.
These challenges can be met by utilising a pH sensor that offers enhanced chemical resistance and durability in environments containing HF, ensuring consistent product quality and reducing the frequency of sensor replacements. The latest pH sensors support increased ease of use by providing self-calibration, automatic alarms and easy integration into control systems. Their durability, low maintenance requirements and digital output capabilities simplify installation, operation and troubleshooting.
Viscosity measurements
In the battery cell manufacturing process, maintaining the correct viscosity of cathode and anode slurries during the mixing, coating, and drying stages is essential for achieving a uniform coating thickness on metal foils, which directly impacts battery performance. Deviations can lead to poor-quality batteries that fail to meet capacity requirements, exhibit variable ion transfer rates, and have unpredictable lifespans and recharge cycles. A reliance on time-consuming and error-prone manual measurements or sampling fails to provide the necessary real-time data to prevent process deviations.
Fork viscosity meters with built-in temperature measurement provide an inline solution to detect real-time viscosity changes, ensuring product consistency and quality. These devices significantly improve ease of use by providing automatic temperature compensation, which simplifies process monitoring, reduces manual sampling and minimises the risk of human error. Operators benefit from intuitive displays, integrated systems and low maintenance requirements.
Precise control
Correct valve selection is essential to ensure precise control of critical parameters such as flow rate, pressure and temperature. Across the different stages of component production there are some very challenging process conditions, such as erosive slurries and corrosive chemicals, which can impact valve performance, so valves need to be properly sized and constructed of appropriate materials. For example, to manage erosive slurries, eccentric plug valves with hardened trim are designed to prevent plugging and to direct erosive forces away from sensitive sealing areas, thereby enhancing durability and performance.
Visibility to the performance and health of valves across their lifecycle is also essential, with any degradation impacting control precision and subsequent product quality. Digital valve controllers (DVCs) provide real-time data to help identify whether a valve is meeting the desired level of performance.
DVCs support increased ease of use by providing real-time diagnostics, simple calibration and set-up, and automated feedback. They reduce human error and enable predictive maintenance, helping to ensure efficient, stable processes while allowing for easy operation and monitoring.
