The industrialization process of 46 large cylinders has been significantly accelerated.
In October 2023, the 20 million 4680 battery cells of Tesla's Texas Gigafactory rolled off the assembly line, marking the beginning of Tesla's 4680 battery capacity expansion period.
As of the beginning of November, EVE has achieved a total of about 88GWh of customer intention demand for cylindrical lithium iron phosphate batteries in the next five years, and a total of about 486GWh of customer intention for ternary large cylindrical batteries in the next five years.
At the same time, CATL, China Innovation Airlines, Envision Power, Lanjun New Energy, Honeycomb Energy, Guoxuan Hi-Tech, Chuangming New Energy, BAK Battery, etc., have made substantial progress in large cylindrical technology.
From the perspective of the current technical route, electrode manufacturing is divided into two routes: wet electrode manufacturing and dry electrode manufacturing, dry electrode is subject to production equipment and technology, organic material matching, etc., industrialization still has a long way to go, and the dry negative electrode piece is ahead of the dry cathode. At present, the manufacturing process is still dominated by the wet route.
Different from the traditional wet electrode manufacturing, the 46 large cylinders pose a greater challenge for the manufacture of electrode pieces.
Under the use of new materials and technologies such as electrodeless lugs and silicon carbon anode, the energy of the 4680 battery cell is increased by 5 times and the output power is increased by 6 times, which also puts forward higher requirements for the front-end equipment. ”Head of the Mannster InstituteIn2023 Gaogong Lithium Annual Conference Large Cylindrical Battery Industrialization Technology Salonon.
The person in charge of the Mannster Research Institute pointed out that the consistency of 4680 cells is upgraded from ppm to ppb level, and the cpk reaches 20 or more, so the uniformity of the slurry is higher, and the detection accuracy and detection rate of the areal density of the coating are higher. In addition, the position requirement of a b should be 0Within 3mm, the thinning area of the electrode piece needs to be controlled within 3mm, and in order to reduce the self-discharge of the battery, demetallization of the production process is also a necessary means.
Focusing on this, Mindster has launched high-efficiency pulping system, ultrasonic testing technology related products, multi-feed die heads, all-ceramic coating dies, high-precision automatic adjustment coating dies and other key products, which effectively meet the manufacturing needs of 4680 cells.
In the pulping processThe high-efficiency pulping system launched by Mannster is highly integrated and continuous pulping, which can achieve one-button pulping through automatic and intelligent control, and adopts high-speed dispersion of ceramic twin screws to improve the efficiency and quality of pulping.
Compared with traditional pulping equipment, the power of Mainster's high-efficiency pulping system can be reduced by 30%-50%, labor can be reduced by 50%, the environmental control cost of the batching system can be reduced by 40%, and the floor space can be reduced by 35%. It is worth mentioning that twin-screw pulping can meet the requirements of slurry to achieve higher solid content, and is more suitable for dry electrode battery production.
At the same time, in the stage of slurry transportation and use, Mannster abandons the traditional pipeline slurry transportation and adopts intelligent scheduling and intelligent scheduling. Under this system, the use of powders, the conveying of slurries, and the data correlation between coating dies and electrodes can be formed, so that the product process can be clearly traced.
In the coating die linkThe person in charge of the Mannster Research Institute said that for the homogeneity control of the areal density of the pole piece, the 4680 battery pole piece generally adopts a multi-stripe coating process, and the uniformity control is difficult. Starting from the die design, Mannster has developed a multi-feed die that results in a significant improvement in wet film thickness consistency. At present, the company has mature products and solutions for single-layer and double-layer automatic dies.
Mannster's innovative fully automatic closed-loop coating system has a fine adjustment spacing of the actuator from 12There are options from 5mm to 45mm, which can meet the needs of various refinements and diversifications.
In order to further meet the needs of 4680 batteries for the improvement of the areal density of the pole piece and the improvement of capacity and capacity consistency, Mannster has launched innovative solutions in terms of high areal density efficiency, high-precision detection, AB surface alignment improvement, thinning improvement, and demetallization.
In the pole piece detection linkRecently, the company has released an ultrasonic areal density measuring instrument based on ultrasonic detection technology, which has greatly improved the detection accuracy and detection rate of the sensor from the user's point of view.
As the first set of ultrasonic surface density measuring instrument products using air coupling technology in China, MANNSTER's solution has five advantages: high safety, high precision, dry and wet film detection, multi-substance detection, and deep integration with the automatic closed-loop system of film making or coating surface density.
In terms of AB plane alignment processingThe 4680 battery has extremely high requirements for capacity and capacity consistency, and the alignment requirements range from 05mm to 03mm。Mannster's alignment control scheme is also a relatively complex system, including coating machine, wet film CCD, dry film CCD, closed-loop control system, coating die and die moving mechanism, path correction mechanism, etc.
In the A-side coating stage, the size detection data of the dry and wet film CCD is linked with the adjustment device of the die head and GAP to achieve accurate control of the A-side sizeIn the B-side coating stage, the double-sided coating film size data fed back by the head and tail CCD is linked with the die, GAP adjustment mechanism and deviation correction mechanism to achieve accurate alignment of the B-side and A-side coating films. a b is in position 0 05mm under CPK >133。
In terms of thinning improvementThe 4680 cell electrode piece puts forward higher requirements for thinning improvement, and Mainster's idea is that special design will be carried out on the edge of the gasket, including chamfering, step, or combination design, which can be carried out according to the specific slurry and coating process. In addition to the gasket design, the head of the Mannster Research Institute also proposed that thinning improvements could be made by feeding the edge T-blocks.
In terms of demetallizationRecently, the company will launch the industry's first all-ceramic fully automatic new die head, which will effectively solve the pain points of the industry such as easy wear and corrosion resistance of metal die.
The head of the Mannster Research Institute emphasized that in the future, Mannster will also launch more ceramic products to provide a safer manufacturing environment for the industry.