Battery Technology

Battery minerals processing

Real-time data for efficient, sustainable metal extraction

Mineral processors delivering metals for battery production face exponentially growing demand: increasingly stringent environmental constraints and depleted ore grades add to the challenge of meeting it. Optimally processing minerals in the face of natural variability is a defining goal and relies on having timely information to drive process control decision-making. The need is for robust, high-availability systems that work reliably in harsh environments to deliver the information needed to maximize recovery while simultaneously minimizing waste and driving up throughput. Explore our solutions below to discover how you can sustainably advance your battery metal extraction operations.

Battery raw materials

Timely analysis and accurate raw material QC

The manufacture of high-quality batteries begins with high-purity raw material feedstocks; lower-grade materials lead to batteries of poor/inconsistent quality, and, potentially, safety issues. Controlling the proportions of each element in the feedstock is crucial to ensure consistent battery performance, with each new batch of raw material necessarily subject to rigorous physicochemical QC. The requirement is for lab quality analysis at the point of need to facilitate robust and rapid decision-making. Ensuring that composition and impurity levels are consistently within specification, through timely analysis, can help to safeguard quality, reduce scrap, enhance productivity, and increase profitability. Learn more about our solutions for battery raw material quality control below.

Battery electrode manufacturing

Smart solutions for electrode manufacturing

Consistent, uniform electrode coatings are critical to the manufacture of high-performance batteries, with uneven coating and defects detrimentally affecting performance characteristics. Detecting increasingly small defects in a timely way is becoming progressively more critical. The first step in producing consistent, even electrode coatings is preparation of cathode and anode slurries. Extrusion and rheology technologies are essential for ensuring that these slurries have the correct composition, homogeneity, and viscosity for high quality electrode production. The next stage in the process, calendering, provides uniformity of the electrode layer, by reducing porosity, improving particle contact with the electrode substrate, and ensuring control of the electrode layer thickness. The same is true for separators with the performance of increasingly sophisticated multilayer films reliant on thickness uniformity. Rapid electrode weight and thickness measurement, with effective defect detection, is vital to enable responsive process control and rapid, cost-effective remedial action, and achieving this requires high precision, fast, and sensitive on-line measurement gauges, with powerful and flexible X-ray sources. We provide a full suite of material characterization and in-line gauging tools - learn more below.

Battery quality control

Testing for QC, investigating failure

Quality control is an essential requirement throughout every step of battery production. Confirming the elemental and organic composition and purity of cathode, electrolyte and anode materials, and ensuring consistent electrode slurry formation are vital steps for making high quality battery cells. During the calendering process, rapid detection of mechanical defects such as poor electrode alignment, overhang, and sub-optimal tab positioning enables fast and effective remedial action, ensuring consistent and reliable electrode production. Discover how our complete range of analytical solutions can help ensure the quality of your batteries. 

Battery recycling

Ramping up understanding for effective recycling

Within the next decade, large scale recycling will become crucial as batteries from the exponentially growing electric car fleet reach end-of-life (following their exhaustion in second life applications) in appreciable numbers. Optimizing bulk recycling and recovery strategies is vital whether addressing the scrap rate in production, the reuse of spent batteries or developing ‘urban mining’ facilities. Disassembling, crushing, shredding, and processing used batteries produces a material referred to as ‘black mass’. Regulations associated with Extended Producer Responsibility (notably in the EU) and high demand for the scarce metals in black mass make it increasingly important, and profitable, to process this material effectively. Screening black mass, tracking the recycling process and certifying maximum impurity levels in the final recycled products are all critical tasks. The need is for analytical techniques that can help to differentiate black mass material streams with respect to value and optimal processing route. Read on below to find out which analytical solutions enable accurate and precise analysis of black mass.