Extruder for Continuous Battery Compound Processing

Two Cope­ri­on ZSK Mc18 twin screw extrud­ers are part of the high-per­for­mance bat­tery cell pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty planned by Cell­force Group – a joint ven­ture between Porsche AG and Cus­tom­cells Hold­ing. Begin­ning in 2024, this new Euro­pean pro­duc­tion site will be a major force in Cell­force Group’s abil­i­ty to serve the high-per­for­mance bat­tery mar­ket seg­ment for spe­cial­ized auto­mo­tive appli­ca­tions. The demand­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing process will fea­ture both state-of-the art extrud­ers and high­ly accu­rate Cope­ri­on K‑Tron feed­ers for the con­tin­u­ous pro­duc­tion of bat­tery com­pounds. With their high degree of flex­i­bil­i­ty, the two extru­sion lines will be able to pro­duce a vari­ety of for­mu­la­tions. The con­tin­u­ous process struc­ture ensures they are repro­ducible at con­sis­tent­ly high prod­uct quality.

Qual­i­ty and Cost Efficiency

The out­stand­ing mix­ing prop­er­ties of the ZSK twin screw extrud­ers was a key fea­ture in their selec­tion for this process. Their through­put can be pre­cise­ly con­trolled to achieve an opti­mal over­all process. The high degree of automa­tion reduces oper­at­ing costs in com­par­i­son to labor- and per­son­nel-inten­sive dis­con­tin­u­ous process­es and results in repro­ducible, con­tin­u­ous­ly high prod­uct quality.

Markus Fiedler, Process Tech­nol­o­gy, Team Leader of Chem­i­cal Appli­ca­tions at Cope­ri­on, “The excel­lent mix­ing behav­ior of the ZSK twin screw extrud­ers makes it pos­si­ble to achieve the espe­cial­ly high homo­gene­ity required for the for­mu­la­tion of these high-per­for­mance bat­ter­ies, which con­tains a high per­cent­age of sil­i­con. Their mod­u­lar con­struc­tion also facil­i­tates adap­ta­tion to new recipes. Thus, future opti­miza­tions, such as the elim­i­na­tion of tox­ic sol­vents, can be imple­ment­ed quick­ly and with­out impact­ing quality.”

One impor­tant aspect in the design of the process in gen­er­al as well as the indi­vid­ual com­po­nents is the safe iso­la­tion of the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. Painstak­ing con­tain­ment designs pre­vent impu­ri­ties and con­t­a­m­i­na­tion from tox­ic mate­ri­als in the work­place and the envi­ron­ment. For this rea­son, the extrud­er and the high-accu­ra­cy Cope­ri­on K‑Tron feed­ers are designed to be dust-tight, ful­fill­ing the high­est require­ments for main­tain­ing puri­ty of the prod­uct and safe­ty of the work environment.

“We are pleased that Cope­ri­on has been giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to this project with our twin screw extrud­ers, feed­ers and mate­r­i­al han­dling sys­tems, there­by doing our part to move the ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion for­ward a bit. The Cell­force Group pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty will be the cor­ner­stone for fur­ther projects of this kind in Europe,” Mar­tin Doll, Busi­ness Seg­ment Man­ag­er for Chem­i­cal Appli­ca­tions and Bat­ter­ies at Coperion.

“We’ve reached a mile­stone here with an inno­v­a­tive process in cell pro­duc­tion that allows us to launch a cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy in Europe, in terms of both qual­i­ty and capac­i­ty,” added Dr. Markus Gräf, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Cell­force Group.