Leveraging Digital Twins for Real-Time Environmental Monitoring in Battery Manufacturing

Abstract

The demand for sustainable battery manufacturing necessitates solutions that allow for comprehensive and real-time environmental monitoring. Current approaches in the battery sector lack these capabilities, hindering timely detection of inefficiencies and resource optimization throughout the manufacturing process. Additionally, there is a lack of visualization solutions on the shop floor to enhance worker awareness for sustainability. This paper introduces a prototype for real-time environmental monitoring and visualization in battery cell manufacturing combining life cycle assessment (LCA) with a digital twin (DT) and a graphical user interface (GUI). Firstly, we calculated the product carbon footprint (PCF) of a battery cell and developed a data model based on this information to define sub-models for the digital twin. The digital twin can be linked to data sources from production and adjacent IT systems. For demonstration purposes it was connected to a data emulator. Using the data structure of the digital twin, a visualization concept was developed to display the current value and history of the product carbon footprint. This visualization is carried out via a GUI and can highlight hotspots in production, serving as a tool for process control and monitoring. Furthermore, the data can be used for energy-efficient process optimization, as demonstrated by the investigation of energy flexibility measures. The next step is the implementation of the demonstrator in a production environment, as well as the implementation of sensors for data acquisition.