PowerCo SE is planning to introduce a completely new manufacturing process in its battery cell production plants in Europe and Northern America. The new technology will significantly boost efficiency and sustainability in volume battery cell production. A subsidiary of Volkswagen Group and based in Salzgitter, Niedersachsen, the battery company aims to industrialize the so-called Dry Coating procedure. The technology allows a decrease in energy consumption of about 30 percent, internal tests have already proven successful. Together with German printing machine specialist Koenig & Bauer AG, PowerCo will further develop and industrialize the Dry Coating procedure.
Thomas Schmall, Group Board Member for Technology at Volkswagen AG and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PowerCo SE: “Technologies like Dry Coating showcase PowerCo’s technological prowess. We have the necessary know-how and the right experts to take cell production to a new level and offer significant cost advantages to our customers. Our objective is to establish an industrial production of sustainable and affordable batteries.”
To achieve this goal, PowerCo and Koenig & Bauer have signed a Joint Development Agreement. Together they will develop a roller press for powder coating electrodes at large industrial scale. The Dry Coating procedure allows manufacturing electrodes without wet-coating and subsequently drying them at high costs. With the new procedure, the most energy-intensive part of cell manufacturing and the use of chemical solvents are no longer required. PowerCo is already testing and optimizing the technology in a pilot line in one of its laboratories in Northern Germany. As a printing specialist, Koenig & Bauer will develop a machine for the industrial powder coating.
According to PowerCo estimates, the new technology has the potential of saving about 30 percent of energy as well as 15 percent of floor space required and will therefore save hundreds of millions of Euros each year. Frank Blome, CEO of PowerCo SE: “What the solid-state cell is to the product, Dry Coating is to production – a real game changer. If scaled successfully, it will give us a unique position on the market and definite competitive advantages.”