The shift towards a more sustainable society is heavily reliant on electrification, which in turn is driven by the rapid growth in battery demand, particularly for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). Advanced manufacturing research for sustainable battery life cycles is of utmost importance to reach net zero carbon emissions (European Commission, 2023a) as well as several of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), for example: 30% reduction of CO2 emission, 10 million job opportunities and access to electricity for 600 million people (World Economic Forum, 2019).
This article highlights international motivations for pursuing more sustainable manufacturing practices and discusses key research topics in battery manufacturing. Batteries will be central to our sustainable future as generation and storage become key components to on-demand energy supply. Four underlying themes are identified to address industrial needs in this field: 1. Digitalizing and automating production capabilities, 2. Human-centric production, 3. Circular battery life cycles, and 4. Future topics for battery value chains. Challenges and opportunities along these themes are highlighted for transforming battery value chains through circularity and more sustainable production, with a particular emphasis on lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).
Digitalizing and automating production capabilities
The challenges associated with Industry 4.0 and Industry 5.0 are closely tied to automated solutions heavily dependent on data access and transparency within production and across the value chain. Achieving resilient and sustainable battery production will increasingly rely on data-driven solutions for ensuring product quality, enabling production systems maintenance, and using digital product passports to manage information across the value chain.
Battery data has many different data sources at each life cycle stage, providing opportunities for data-driven quality and performance management in battery manufacturing. The collection of data on battery use can enable feedback loops into manufacturing production, thereby providing opportunities to improve production processes. Emerging studies focus on improving EV battery performance and health utilizing technologies like machine learning algorithms, decentralized data systems, and statistical models (Aenugu et al., 2020; Vidal et al., 2020; Yang et al., 2023). However, the main challenge is that the identification of patterns and trends is highly reliant on the quantity and quality of collected battery data (Wang L. et al., 2020).
Quality assurance strategies can be grouped into robust design, improvements in tolerancing, quality control measures during production, and root cause analysis for problem identification. Methods and strategies to reduce quality losses and identify quality problems are of vital importance for competitiveness and sustainability in modern EV battery production.
Battery manufacturing plants are complex systems, making maintenance operations a crucial necessity to achieve high levels of operational performance. Smart maintenance concepts, including data-driven decision-making, human capital resource, internal integration, and external integration, offer opportunities and challenges for the battery sector (Bokrantz et al., 2020).
Human-centric production
The human-centric approach aims at empowering humans both regarding understanding, learning, and gaining insights as well as for decision making. Extended reality (XR) has been identified as one of the enabling technologies of Industry 4.0 and beyond, offering new immersive mediums of human-interaction with virtual, as well as physical, assets of production systems. XR can facilitate the virtual workstations and procedures and provide immersive experience and training for the operators in a non-disruptive and risk-free virtual environment.
Robotic automation can handle generic pick-and-place tasks and robotic inspection in battery production, especially in module and pace assembly (Kwade et al., 2018) and quality control (Sharma, 2024). However, conventional industrial robots are incompetent in dexterous robotic manipulation required for conducting complex operations in compact workplaces or handling flexible workpieces in components assembly. Human-robot collaboration is expected to enable the system to benefit from the symbiosis between robotic strengths in high accuracy and repeatability and humans’ superiority in agility and adaptability.
Additionally, cognitive loading in battery production relates to various operations and management tasks such as planning and quality control. A cognitively designed work leads to better product quality and worker wellbeing (Malmsköld et al., 2015; Wollter Bergman et al., 2021). The widespread societal transformation also presents a major global challenge: the need to upskill and reskill the workforce for new or evolving job roles.
Circular battery production systems
As batteries rely on scarce and valuable material flows, the transition towards circular systems is gaining momentum to create more sustainable and resilient battery production systems. Applying principles of circularity to the battery design, material acquisition/sourcing, production, usage, and end-of-life management establishes the goal to retain and recover as much value as possible out of the used products.
The LIB value chain comprises distinct stages, each playing a crucial role in achieving circularity. Design plays a pivotal role, as batteries designed for easy disassembly and recycling are more likely to be recycled at the end of their life. Production involves energy use for assembly and quality assurance, with cathode materials contributing significantly to emissions. Collection, pre-treatment and recycling of LIBs stand out as crucial activities to enable circular economy, although challenges remain in terms of process efficiency, safety, and compatibility with diverse battery types.
Battery repurposing in a “second life” application is an important circularity strategy that offers promising business solutions to mitigate supply chain risks, reduces the environmental impact of manufacturing new LIBs, and creates additional economic value. Circular battery business planning needs to consider external circumstances, temporal changes and future uncertainties, and appropriate combinations of life cycle options and business models.
Future battery value chains
LIB production depends on key materials sourced from several different geographical regions around the world, making them vulnerable to risks. Manufacturing resilience is the ability of manufacturing companies and their supply chains to anticipate, cope, and learn from disruptions caused by risks. Digitalization offers key opportunities and advantages to build the resilience of the LIB value network, through technologies like IoT, big data, and decentralized data systems.
The digital product passport concept relies on unique identifiers and decentralized ledger systems to provide extensive data throughout a product’s life cycle to fill the information voids and ensure transparency and verifiability of the information. In the battery sector, the development of digital battery passports has become a use case for digital product passports, aiming to enable traceability of battery materials and components, manage complex information flows enabling circular strategies, and address disruptions.
As the production of batteries ramps up and circularity is pursued, attention will need to be given to guidelines for design and recovery of the new batteries, including next-generation battery chemistries such as Na-ion batteries and solid-state batteries. Handling the production of solid-state batteries poses various challenges compared to traditional LIBs, including the implementation of the Li-metal anode, the solid polymer electrolyte material, and the brittleness of the solid electrolyte.
The key to developing sustainable battery production lies in creating eco-friendly systems from raw material preparation to electrode manufacturing and cell assembly. Dry coating technologies, such as roll-to-roll dry coating and electrostatic coating, offer significant savings in manufacturing costs and reduced CO2 emissions compared to the conventional slurry-based electrode manufacturing process.
Conclusion
The main suggestions for future research to address challenges for sustainable battery production include:
– Data-driven approaches for quality monitoring and digital passports for battery lifetime management
– Quality assurance methods for tolerancing, root cause analysis, and robust design
– Environmentally friendly materials and processes that enable reuse/recycling and maximize battery performance
– Robust and automated processes for battery production and recycling, empowering humans as decision makers
– Upskilling and reskilling of the workforce, including training materials and VR/AR supported learning environments
– Robust business planning, innovative business models and resilient manufacturing value chains
– Improved end-of-use and end-of-life treatment methods for spent batteries
– Digital product passport and digital battery passport development
– Design guidelines for new battery chemistries to meet evolving business models and circularity goals
– Comprehensive sustainability assessment of the new battery production systems
The ongoing shift towards a more environmentally friendly society is heavily reliant on electrification, and sustainable battery production is crucial to support this transformation. Addressing the identified challenges and exploring the outlined opportunities through advanced manufacturing research can contribute towards a cleaner, more energy-efficient, and circular future.
