The Faraday Battery Challenge is releasing funds for scale-up capability of UK battery research.
The electric vehicle (EV) battery ecosystem is complex. The rapid uptake of electric vehicles requires a strategic approach to new supply chains, battery chemistries, materials, and the necessary skilled workforce.
Aiming to capitalise on EV growth and maintain the UK's leading position in global EV battery research and development, the Faraday Battery Challenge has awarded £12 million in funding for the Advanced Materials Battery Industrialisation Centre (AMBIC) – a collaboration between WMG, University of Warwick and CPI at Northeast Technology Park (NETPark) in County Durham.
AMBIC will provide capability for the scale-up of synthesis and processing of current and next-generation battery materials.
‘AMBIC will focus on battery innovation, as we look at using state-of-the-art materials and improving manufacturing and scale up,’ explains Professor Louis Piper, an electrochemist at WMG.
‘A significant part of the cost of an EV battery is the cathode material, typically making up half the cost of the battery cell. Cell fabrication accounts for 25%. Research to understand how we can utilise materials improvements at scale to improve energy density and battery life will be a focus of AMBIC. Here at WMG we already work with materials on the kilogram scale, giving us a better understanding of what to expect moving from lab- to industrial scale production.’
The centre will also help to showcase the UK’s academic leadership. ‘For the UK to take its great academic research into production and to capture the billions of pounds of resulting economic value in the UK, we need facilities which allow Britain to scale up and fully evaluate new materials. This investment, alongside combined skillsets of CPI and WMG, will provide that capability for the UK,’ added Professor David Greenwood, CEO of the WMG High Value Manufacturing.
Sodium as an alternative to lithium is just one area of research. ‘While sodium is less expensive than lithium, it presents another set of challenges when used in an EV battery, which have to be mitigated to ensure cheaper battery options,’ explains Piper. ‘There is also work to be done around solid state and nickel-rich batteries looking at their chemistry and the wider impacts of their use. AMBIC will also be investigating several alternative battery materials, and the processes needed to create them.’
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges AMBIC will take on is the need for a skilled workforce. ‘Battery technology is moving rapidly,’ says Piper, ‘and we need to rapidly scale up the skilled workforce from the apprentice level through to PhD-level researchers.’
A whole manufacturing strategy is needed, he adds. From the supply of raw materials to the assembly of cells, the shortage of skills needs to be addressed – not just in the UK, but globally.
AMBIC will serve to meet the UK’s battery ambitions on several other fronts including bringing together scalable, commercially relevant equipment into one facility to fast-track battery materials development; helping to stimulate and grow the chemical materials supply chain to collaborate and invest in the UK; and enabling rapid and cost-effective product and process design.
While AMBIC is a UK project, WMG has a global focus with links to academics across the globe. ‘Academic partnerships are a core part of the work WMG does; we have good links with organisations across the world,’ Piper says.
Taking that collaborative ethos into the new project, AMBIC is inviting companies working on innovative battery solutions to contact the project to see how they can work together.
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