Mobile energy sources
What is the state of the European battery market?
The battery industry has developed into a key supplier for many sectors. With the demand for mobile energy sources, the number of players along the battery value chain is growing - also in Europe. This strengthens the local market for battery integration and recycling as well as in the upstream steps.
Rising raw material prices and the goal of sustainable production have triggered a trend towards increasingly looking for European raw material sources to produce battery cells. These offer a number of advantages, such as cost-effective and more environmentally friendly production, faster delivery, security of supply and the possibility of creating regional value chains. In addition, the scarcity of primary raw materials and efforts to establish a circular economy for battery cell production in Europe have increased the need to obtain secondary raw materials from recycling. Accordingly, there are a large number of activities in the Re-X sector involving collaborations between OEMs, established technology companies and established recycling companies on the European market.
Battery production requires industrial plant technology that can meet the high requirements in terms of throughput, process quality and degree of automation. Due to the increasing demand for lithium-ion batteries from the mobility sector, but also for stationary applications, the market segment has developed rapidly in recent years. Asian companies currently dominate the global market for battery cell production in the field of systems engineering.
The environment report on the European battery innovation system 2022 looks at how the European industry is responding to this situation through innovation and by taking trends and European requirements into account. By 2030, 20 new gigafactories from European and non-European operators are to be built in Europe. The battery cells produced there will be used in the field of electromobility in particular. In addition, cell manufacturers with no direct connection to the automotive industry are focusing on particularly innovative or sustainable technologies.
The innovation paths of the Fraunhofer Research Institution for Battery Cell Production FFB aim to support industrial partners in finding solutions to R&D challenges. To this end, production lines and laboratories are being set up that make it possible to investigate technologies at the appropriate level of production scaling. In addition to the physical infrastructure, digital twins of the cell production lines will bundle the data, generate further process understanding and thus contribute to accelerating technological development times.
The study was carried out as part of the "FoFeBat" project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The aim of the project is to establish the FFB battery cell research production facility in Münster, a Fraunhofer institution that will enable research and development on battery cell production up to the GWh scale.
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Fraunhofer FFB, www.forschungsfertigung-batteriezelle.fraunhofer.de
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