Energy efficient cluster approach for dry room operation in lithium-ion battery production

Summary:

As a matter of fact, the operation of low dew point dry rooms is essential for the clean and safe production of lithi-um-ion battery cells. However, the high demand in electrici-ty, natural gas and further supplies is a barrier on the path to sustainable energy storage solution. As Vogt et al simulated in their work, regardless of the place on earth where you run a battery plant, the energy demand remains high especially for the dry room operation.
Especially for research facilities like the FFB with many differ-ent labs where the utilization of the individual dry rooms may be below 100 %, current designs of dry rooms create high investment and operational costs. Thus, combining these rooms in a novel cluster approach is a great tool to de-crease both measures while remaining flexible in the utiliza-tion of the labs.

The approach by the Fraunhofer FFB helped in the planning of the first building to meet the budget restrictions and maintain the needs of a flexible battery research facility with state of the art dry rooms. Also, the operational costs and with that the environmental footprint of the research con-ducted their can be significantly improved.

Also, more modes of operation are possible with the con-nection of several labs with one dehumidification unit what again increases the flexibility of the Fraunhofer FFB.