Towards the sustainable giga-factory: developing green cell manufacturing processes

The EU has established an ambitious industrial goal to make Europe a strategic global leader in the Li-ion battery value chain, deploying a sustainable and innovative industry. This urges the sector to make sure that the industrial production is inherently sustainable, safe, flexible and cost-effective while delivering cutting edge cells. The main objective of GIGAGREEN is to boost the next wave of electrode and cell component processing techniques, enabling breakthrough innovations to improve the environmental, economic and social performance of generation 3b Li-ion cells manufacturing industry, thus positioning Europe at the forefront of the global market.GIGAGREEN proposes a structured research plan to develop and scale up (TRL 3-4 to 5-6) novel electrode and cell component manufacturing processes that follow a Design to Manufacture (DtM) approach. This is, seeking for the minimum environmental impact and energy consumption, cell designs which facilitate the re-use and disassembly, increasement of the cost-efficiency and safety of processes and products, and high-throughput technologies able to be easily scaled up and automated in the context of industry 4.0/5.0 giga-factories. Supported by a vibrant and experienced consortium of academic and industrial partners, GIGAGREEN will follow two alternative R&I trajectories. The first one, based on N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP)-free wet processing, is designed for a quick scale up and market uptake of optimised wet coating systems in current industrial setups (final TRL6, 30 cells of 10 Ah prototyped as demonstration). The second one, based on dry processing, will explore breakthrough technologies, achieving a smaller TRL by the end of the project (final TRL5, 30-40 mAh monolayer pouch cells prototypes as proof of concept), paving the path for upcoming R&I experiences to continue scaling up the most promising dry processing techniques.