A research team led by Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher Yan Wang has pioneered a solvent-free method for producing electrodes for lithium-ion batteries. The novel approach could revolutionize battery manufacturing for electric vehicles, resulting in greener, more cost-effective and faster-charging electrodes than those currently available.
The team reports in the journal Joule the dry printing fabrication technique, which avoids the harmful solvents inherent in conventional electrode production methods. The innovative process is scalable and has the potential to reduce electrode production costs by as much as 15 percent, the scientists say. Additionally, skipping the traditional drying and solvent recovery processes cut battery manufacturing energy consumption by about 47 percent, the researchers report.
China's lithium battery technology continues to make breakthroughs. From the perspective of the number of papers published on lithium batteries, the number of papers published on lithium batteries in China has shown a trend of increasing year by year since 2010, which shows that the research enthusiasm for lithium batteries continues to rise. As of August 2022, 69,366 papers related to lithium batteries have been published in China.
The data shows that in 2020, thanks to the growth in demand for lithium batteries in emerging industries and fields such as new energy vehicles, energy storage, electric bicycles, and electric tools, China's lithium battery shipments will be 142.9GWh. In 2021, the demand for power batteries and energy storage batteries in China will surge, and the annual lithium battery shipments will reach 327 GWh.
It is expected that in the next five years, driven by new energy vehicles, two-wheel vehicles, base stations, electric energy storage, electric tools, and 3C digital, the compound annual growth rate of China's power lithium battery shipments will exceed 25% by 2025. According to this growth rate forecast, China's power lithium battery shipments are expected to exceed 839GWh in 2027.
Academician Ouyang Minggao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences believes that China's battery technology innovation potential is still huge, and the new generation of battery technology is constantly making breakthroughs. In the first half of this year, the output of the entire lithium-ion battery industry chain exceeded 280GWh, an increase of 150%. The revenue of the whole industry has exceeded 480 billion, and it is expected to exceed one trillion for the whole year.