Digitalization Platform for Mechanistic Modeling of Battery Cell Production

The application of batteries in electric vehicles and stationary energy-storage systems is widely seen as a promising enabler for a sustainable mobility and for the energy sector. Although significant improvements have been achieved in the last decade in terms of higher battery performance and lower production costs, there remains high potential to be tapped, especially along the battery production chain. However, the battery production process is highly complex due to numerous process–structure and structure–performance relationships along the process chain, many of which are not yet fully understood. In order to move away from expensive trial-and-error operations of production lines, a methodology is needed to provide knowledge-based decision support to improve the quality and throughput of battery production. In the present work, a framework is presented that combines a process chain model and a battery cell model to quantitatively predict the impact of processes on the final battery cell performance. The framework enables coupling of diverse mechanistic models for the individual processes and the battery cell in a generic container platform, ultimately providing a digital representation of a battery electrode and cell production line that allows optimal production settings to be identified in silico. The framework can be implemented as part of a cyber-physical production system to provide decision support and ultimately control of the production line, thus increasing the efficiency of the entire battery cell production process.