Large amount of emission is expected to be reduced by transitioning from
internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs) in the
future. The production of Li-ion batteries (LIBs) which is the most common
battery type in electric vehicles is an energy-intensive and costly process. In
specific, a very great amount of embedded emissions can be produced based on
the type of energy used. In LIB manufacturing, drying process is taking 70-80
% of energy usage and more specifically electrode drying is taking around half
of the time for drying process.
Large amount of Energy and cost requirement for drying process is needed in
LIB production, nonetheless, little research has been conducted to the LIB
industry. It is meaning that there is a great potent to improve LIB production
by adapting different types of methodologies from other field. Energy
requirement of drying electrodes is very high in conventional drying method.
Elaborately for evaporating organic solvent: N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone - NMP,
the drying air is needed to be heated up to 140 °C and thereafter for
condensation, the air is needed to be cooled down to 6 °C. In this case,
burning of fossil-fuel is the primary energy source and Specific Solvent
Extraction Rate (SSER) of solvent NMP is lower than 0.1 kg in kWh.
The project will be devoted to analysis and provide optimal design for
different configurations of industrial CO2 trans-critical systems for electrode
drying process in LIBs production. The goal is to increase SSER up to 0.5 by
applying trans-critical CO2 heat pump to the system and it will result in
bringing higher efficiency of energy recovery with the use of gas-cooler heat
and raising up the air temperature up to 70 °C after condensation of NMP.
Additionally, heat pump with the application of small cascade auxiliary
butane will give even higher SSER as up to 0.6.