Here are the 4 Top Considerations in Lithium-Ion ...

David Verner

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Battery technology has evolved to where you can drive an electric vehicle (EV) almost 500 miles on a charge while charging networks continue to grow across the United States. Electric cars out-accelerate their gasoline-powered cousins and include technology features only dreamed of 10 years ago. EVs are not simply different, they represent a new species of transportation.

Technology and acceptance are reaching a critical tipping point that is spurring a surge in electric cars across the world. Long-established original equipment manufacturers have embraced this technology and committed to changing their entire fleet over to battery-powered vehicles.

All of this means we have to build a lot of batteries, and there is a surge of battery plants now being planned in the US. In many ways, these manufacturing plants are like other large-scale manufacturing facilities. However, large-scale battery manufacturing plants have unique design and construction considerations that can be boiled down into four key challenges.

Challenge No. 1: Creating and Maintaining an Ultra-Low Humidity Environment

While high-level clean rooms are adequate for semiconductor manufacturing, they contain 30 times more humidity than the ultra-low relative humidity (RH) requirements for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Uncontrolled humidity in battery plants will cause defects resulting in reduced product life, performance, overheating during charging, and potentially thermal runaway—i.e., fires.

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Lithium-ion battery manufacturing demands the most stringent humidity control and the first challenge is to create and maintain these ultra-low RH environments in battery manufacturing plants. Ultra-low in this case means less than 1 percent RH, which is difficult to maintain because, when you get to <1 percent RH, some odd things start to happen.

Moisture Mitigation

When designing a clean room, one tool to keep the room clean is to pressurize the volume, which pushes out the air so that particulate matter can’t infiltrate the space. However, that approach alone will not maintain a <1 percent RH dry room. At ultra-low humidity, moisture migrates in the opposite direction of the air stream. To address moisture issues, a dry room must be moisture tight, i.e., sealed all the way around in a complete envelope—underneath, on all sides, and at the top.

Once the seal is complete, one of the next largest sources of moisture is people. Every breath releases moisture into the atmosphere, and at <1 percent RH, water is drawn from your skin creating humidity “puddles” in a dry room environment. To successfully identify and mitigate humidity puddles, advanced design tools need to be employed. For example, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling is used to understand airflow within a space and identify where humidity puddles are likely to occur. Then, your design team can take action by adjusting the air streams or adding additional equipment.

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Choosing the Right Materials

In addition to using insulated metal panels with butyl seals and cam locks, airlocks at entry points, and sealed vapor barriers under floor slabs, it is also important to note that ultra-low humidity rooms can dry out traditional lubricants and sealants. So much so that if you install a door-closer that’s not designed for this type of space, the sealants can turn to powder over time. That’s why it’s vital to consider the effect of ultra-low humidity on all materials as they can potentially be impacted by this type of environment and compromise the room.  

Challenge No. 2: Unique Hazards & Fire Protection Requirements

Another key differentiator in the design of battery manufacturing facilities is the ability to manage the unique hazards posed by the battery cells themselves. Understanding state of charge (SOC) is key to creating a safe working environment. During the manufacturing process, if cells get above 35 to 50 percent SOC, they must be treated as a fire hazard due to the energy density in a large number of stored cells. A manufacturing defect in a cell above 35 percent SOC, for instance, can create thermal runaway that will spread to nearby cells initiating a chain reaction.

Mitigation measures include elaborate fire protection systems such as gas detection equipment that identifies problems before thermal runaway occurs, extensive in-rack sprinkler systems, and even heat-seeking water cannons that target temperature increases before a fire starts. These systems are combined with more traditional life safety tools, such as firewalls separating different hazard classified areas.

Because of the unique nature of these plants, US  building codes are only just now being developed for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Previously, the codes were only established for battery storage systems and not for the manufacturing process. Therefore, it is important at the beginning of a project to prepare a life safety plan and fire protection approach for review with the local building and fire officials.

Challenge No. 3: Liaising with Process Equipment Vendors

Because the US is still catching up to battery-manufacturing technology, most of the process equipment that’s being installed in US battery manufacturing facilities comes from China, South Korea, and Japan. This means communicating across language barriers and time barriers—and many early-morning or evening meetings.

A big part of this challenge is technical translation. Ideally, you need engineers on your team who can bridge the language barrier. If they are not available a translator is necessary. However, a pure translator is not particularly effective since they don't know the technical nuances and therefore can’t translate the meaning. For this reason, it is critical to have someone on your team who’s not only technically experienced but also has the required linguistic skills.

Additionally, team members who are not bilingual need to appreciate the difference between what is said versus what is meant. This drives home the importance of patience and taking the time to truly understand what is being discussed—on both sides.

Video calls are important in bridging the language gap. When you see someone, even if you’re not speaking the same language or there's a translator between you, you can watch their body language, which is extremely valuable. Additionally, never understate the value of graphics—a picture is worth a million words when you’re trying to communicate across language barriers. Lastly, building in extra time for meetings is crucial. Bilingual technical meetings take at least twice as long as you would normally expect.

Challenge No. 4: High Electrical Demands

The final challenge when designing a large-scale battery manufacturing plant is very high electrical demands. In addition to normal manufacturing electrical demand, the formation stage of battery manufacturing requires the charging and discharging of each battery cell. This drives an unusually high electrical demand for these facilities, which will likely necessitate a new, dedicated substation. New substations require very long lead times, which will drive your schedule.

“Power-On” becomes a crucial date. Therefore, your team must have the ability to rapidly understand the electrical need and coordinate effectively with the utility supplier. These suppliers are often their “own masters” and operate independently of other governmental agencies. They are not used to working at the speed required by large-scale manufacturing operations. Bottom line—bring both your hard- and soft-skill sets to the table when coordinating with the utility company.

A Recipe for Success

To effectively develop battery manufacturing plants, you need to successfully combine these four key challenges, which will evolve as technology advances. Already, we are exploring the direction these facilities might take over the next 10 years, such as smaller dry room environments, less intensive power use combined with recycling, significantly different building codes, and more sophisticated fire protection systems to name just a few of the advances we see on the horizon as we power toward an electric future.  

David Verner, RA, NCARB is an executive vice president of Industrial at Gresham Smith, an architectural design firm located in the US.

New battery plants are popping up like wild flowers all over North America, as automakers embark on one of their biggest building sprees ever, fueled by the multibillion dollar transition to electric vehicles. Legacy OEMs and start-ups are partnering with lithium-ion battery manufacturers such as AESC, LG Energy Solution Ltd., Panasonic, Samsung SDI and SK On.

LG Energy Solution alone plans to build eight factories in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Ontario that will supply General Motors, Honda, Hyundai and Stellantis. Those facilities, which will account for more than 300 gigawatt-hours of EV production capacity, will be massive plants that each comprise several million square feet of floor space.

Numerous EV battery plants will be built in North America during the next decade. Illustration courtesy Argonne National Laboratory

Battery factories require a new way of thinking about plant design and construction. Manufacturing engineers must pay careful attention to factors such as production flow, material handling, environmental control and fire safety.

Factories that mass-produce battery cells, modules and packs demand a different layout than traditional automotive facilities. For instance, they require multilevel mixing buildings that use gravity-fed production processes to transform raw materials into anodes and cathodes. Clean rooms are essential, and humidity control is extremely important. Battery facilities also typically require two to three times the electrical load of a conventional automotive assembly plant.

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The unprecedented demand for EVs has triggered the rapid expansion of battery manufacturing facilities. Automakers and suppliers are investing billions of dollars in mega-plants that each span 3 to 4 million square feet and require 100 to 130 megawatts of power.

Engineers face many unique design and construction considerations. In fact, there are four major challenges that go hand in hand with the complexities of establishing an EV battery manufacturing facility: 

• Highly aggressive schedules.
• Multinational global teams.
• Budget and cost control.
• Unique quality issues.

Battery factories require a new way of thinking about plant design and construction. Illustration courtesy Bosch Rexroth Corp.

Highly Aggressive Schedules

Achieving speed to market with an EV battery manufacturing facility is critical. To meet these demands, project teams must use a fast-tracked design, construction and equipment installation schedule consisting of overlapping and simultaneous tasks throughout the project. Early planning is imperative.

Your plan should be comprehensive from beginning to end. At the start, one of the first critical decisions is identifying the optimal site. Not finding the right site is a perfect recipe for derailing a project at the beginning.

If you pick the wrong site, your team will be fighting this decision through design, construction, startup and operation. Take the time to do a technical evaluation of the site, including permitting requirements, utility availability, topography and soil conditions, as well as the current and future labor force before you close on the property. Do not be seduced by the “best” financial incentives.

Project teams must use a fast-tracked design, construction and equipment installation schedule consisting of overlapping and simultaneous tasks. Illustration courtesy Gresham Smith

Moving to the other end of the schedule, since EV battery manufacturing facilities require an extraordinary amount of specialized equipment that will be installed in phases, planning ahead for installation is also critical.

The first production line is usually installed to meet the extremely important sample production date. This means subsequent lines will be installed while product is being produced in a dry, ultra-low relative humidity (less than 1 percent) and clean environment.

This phased approach cannot be successfully accomplished without a well-developed installation plan from your design, construction and operation team.

Time and time again, it has been proven that a good plan will overcome poor execution. However, great execution will rarely overcome a poor plan. So, take time and move slowly at the beginning of your project. That will allow you to move much faster in future phases.

Finally, remember that no plan survives first contact with a project. In other words, your plans are going to change. Therefore, flexibility should be built into your team’s thinking, as well as your project plan, to quickly adapt.

Multinational Global Teams

Many battery manufacturers are based in China, Japan and other Southeast Asian countries. Your project team will be multinational, multilingual and multicultural, working from multiple time zones. Fostering effective collaboration among your team members and cultivating those relationships is crucial when working with a global team.

These are the people you will be spending the next four to five years with through the design, construction, commissioning, startup and operation of your facility. Therefore, it is essential to make the time and effort to pick the right team members with the necessary combination of experience, expertise and attitude who can work well together as part of a global team.

It is also vital that you are prepared to create and maintain a collaborative culture. Fortunately, we now have excellent collaboration tools for teams that are spread across the globe, such as:

•  Video calls. Turn your camera on. Whether it’s Microsoft Teams, Zoom or some other meeting platform, calls are important in bridging the language gap. When you see someone, even if you are not speaking the same language or if there is a translator, you can watch their body language, which is extremely valuable.
•  3D graphics. Never underestimate the value of graphics. A picture is worth a million words when you are trying to communicate across language barriers.
•  Cloud-based services. Document storage and version control is always a challenge on a project. Fortunately, we now have the ability to use cloud-based document management websites for collaborative projects.

Make the investment to become very comfortable with these tools and build in extra time for meetings. This is crucial, since bilingual and bicultural technical meetings will take at least twice as long as you would normally expect.

Budget and Cost

Electric vehicle battery plants are expensive. To effectively control both first- and long-term costs, it’s a good idea to focus on total ownership cost (TOC), which includes site, design, construction and operating costs.

Once you understand the entire cost and where the big money is—for example, the facility’s mechanical and electrical systems—you can start to drive down that cost. Saving a nickel here and a dime there while dollars are flying out the door is simply not the right way to approach such a complex endeavor.

Good early planning will also drive down TOC. While you can control cost at the beginning of a project as you make fundamental design decisions, once you enter into procurement and construction, you are no longer in a position to effectively save money. In fact, you are going to be spending money very rapidly.

It’s a good idea to focus on total ownership cost, which includes site, design, construction and operating costs. Illustration courtesy Gresham Smith

It is crucial that your team members have a budget target and have the necessary information to track costs and estimate on an ongoing basis. There are many good estimators in the world, but very few who can estimate effectively based on the limited amount of information you have at the early stages of design.

It is critical to have an estimating team that is capable of making rough-order magnitude estimates at the beginning of a project to help drive your early decision making.

Effective decision making is really important when it comes to cost control.

Design and construction is all about decision making. And, your project leadership must have the ability to make good decisions fast. Since an EV battery manufacturing facility often represents a joint venture between an automaker and a supplier, there is another layer of complexity added. Each joint-venture partner will have very different decision-making styles.

If you begin your project without having a clear idea of who is in charge, you’re starting off on the wrong foot and setting yourself up for confusion that will cause schedule delays and will cost money. The bottom line? Effective decision making is really important when it comes to cost control.

Unique Quality Issues

An EV battery manufacturing plant is much different than a traditional automotive assembly plant, because of the high-speed production processes that take place within a highly sensitive environment that needs to be meticulously controlled. Dense with equipment, these facilities must maintain ultra-low humidity and a clean room environment around the clock.

Battery plants are also different from other types of advanced manufacturing. For instance, clean rooms for semiconductor manufacturing are not dry rooms. They contain 30 times more humidity than the ultra-low requirements for battery plants. Uncontrolled humidity in battery plants will cause defects resulting in reduced product life and performance, overheating during charging and potentially thermal runaway, including fires.

Because of the ultra-dry and clean room environment required, you should start with a dry-clean culture mindset from the very beginning. This will pay dividends as you begin to certify the production spaces and install equipment. If done well, it will translate into the ongoing operational culture of your facility.

Battery manufacturing requires high-speed production equipment and processes that need to be meticulously controlled. Photo courtesy Volkswagen AG

In addition, you need to focus on training your personnel in how the overall building works as a system and make sure they fully understand its sensitivities. Before the plant is operational, develop a plan for a “soft production landing” in case things go wrong.

For example, your mechanical system will have certain outside temperatures that the system is designed to operate within. But, with increasingly common extreme weather events, it is not a matter of if you are going to get outside of the system design parameters, but a matter of when. Therefore, every EV battery plant needs an operational plan in the event of extreme weather.

That plan should include tracking incoming severe weather systems, closely monitoring your building systems and potentially ceasing production, and—since people are one of the main sources of humidity—pulling all personnel out of the clean and dry rooms until the storm passes.

Redundancy can be expensive. However, spending the time and money to understand where redundancy is prudent—on the front end of a project—can help avert disaster once a plant is operational. The consequences of making a “penny-wise, pound-foolish” decision will cost you five to 10 times more in the future. Ultimately, when you do not take the TOC into consideration up front, you stand to lose millions of dollars further down the line.

Finally, embrace a future-oriented mindset. The EV industry is still relatively new, which means new innovations are being made every day. The plant you are building today will someday need to support battery manufacturing for an entirely different chemistry from what is currently used.

Battery factories should be designed to optimize material flow, maximize productivity and reduce time to market. Illustration courtesy Gresham Smith

Sowing Seeds for Success

To help optimize material flow, maximize productivity and reduce time to market, it’s important to combine what are often individual buildings into a single, larger structure while maintaining appropriate fire separation and life-safety protections. This not only reduces the general site requirement area and the amount of conveyor systems needed, but also reduces the overall construction and operational costs of the project.

Also consider creating a “spine” that runs down the center of the plant. In an EV battery manufacturing facility, there are two separate parallel cathode and anode lines. This separation creates a natural location to include a central spine. This not only provides a circulation path for people and equipment, but also a utility distribution path that cuts down on the distances for all utilities feeding the process, which greatly reduces cost.

High-speed delta robots are used for battery cell coating applications. Photo courtesy BMW AG

Electric vehicles are driving a once-in-a-century change to our economy through the creation of an entirely new industrial ecosystem that is creating multiple opportunities at multiple scales all over the world. This systemwide change will continue to grow and evolve.

Establishing an EV battery manufacturing facility during this industrial and economic shift poses unique challenges that require careful consideration and strategic thinking. A highly aggressive schedule is crucial for achieving the required speed to market, and it necessitates early planning, comprehensive site evaluation and well-developed equipment installation plans.

Embracing a future-oriented mindset and incorporating innovative design concepts will enhance efficiency, optimize material flow and reduce construction costs. By addressing these challenges proactively, companies can position themselves for success in the rapidly evolving EV battery manufacturing industry.

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