Simulation-based assessment of the energy demand in battery cell manufacturing

Abstract

Electric vehicles are seen as a solution towards mitigating the environmental impacts of the transportation sector as they do not produce tailpipe emissions. However, this technological shift in the transportation sector brings new environmental challenges. Particularly, the production of the battery system has been estimated to potentially contribute to around 50% of the total cradle to gate environmental impact of the production of an electric vehicle. In this regard, the energy required for the manufacturing of battery cells has been identified as one of the largest environmental and economic hotspots. While the emerging battery manufacturing industry is still highly unconstrained, the variability of product and processing parameters is difficult to capture and compare. Even more, battery cell manufacturing consists of a complex and dynamic combination of numerous continuous and discrete processes as well as technical building services which account for a high share on energy demand. This has led to a large uncertainty in the values reported in the current literature and also hinders the derivation of improvement measures. Against this background, the paper presents a simulation-based assessment of the energy demand in battery cell manufacturing. Based on collected field data, a multi-paradigm simulation of the battery manufacturing process chain has been built. Multiple simulations scenarios were subsequently run allowing to analyze the factors and circumstances driving energy demand. This paper aims to contribute towards enhancing the knowledge on the energy related impacts of traction battery systems and to provide a frame of reference for the variability of the required manufacturing energy that might be used as input for further sensitivity analysis in system assessment methodologies such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Life Cycle Costing (LCC) respectively Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).