David Verner
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Battery technology has evolved to where you can drive an electric vehicle (EV) almost 500 miles on a charge while charging networks continue to grow across the United States. Electric cars out-accelerate their gasoline-powered cousins and include technology features only dreamed of 10 years ago. EVs are not simply different, they represent a new species of transportation.
Technology and acceptance are reaching a critical tipping point that is spurring a surge in electric cars across the world. Long-established original equipment manufacturers have embraced this technology and committed to changing their entire fleet over to battery-powered vehicles.
All of this means we have to build a lot of batteries, and there is a surge of battery plants now being planned in the US. In many ways, these manufacturing plants are like other large-scale manufacturing facilities. However, large-scale battery manufacturing plants have unique design and construction considerations that can be boiled down into four key challenges.
Challenge No. 1: Creating and Maintaining an Ultra-Low Humidity Environment
While high-level clean rooms are adequate for semiconductor manufacturing, they contain 30 times more humidity than the ultra-low relative humidity (RH) requirements for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Uncontrolled humidity in battery plants will cause defects resulting in reduced product life, performance, overheating during charging, and potentially thermal runaway—i.e., fires.
Related:Let’s Meet the 7 Top Battery Suppliers That Are Leading The EV Revolution
Lithium-ion battery manufacturing demands the most stringent humidity control and the first challenge is to create and maintain these ultra-low RH environments in battery manufacturing plants. Ultra-low in this case means less than 1 percent RH, which is difficult to maintain because, when you get to <1 percent RH, some odd things start to happen.
Moisture Mitigation
When designing a clean room, one tool to keep the room clean is to pressurize the volume, which pushes out the air so that particulate matter can’t infiltrate the space. However, that approach alone will not maintain a <1 percent RH dry room. At ultra-low humidity, moisture migrates in the opposite direction of the air stream. To address moisture issues, a dry room must be moisture tight, i.e., sealed all the way around in a complete envelope—underneath, on all sides, and at the top.
Once the seal is complete, one of the next largest sources of moisture is people. Every breath releases moisture into the atmosphere, and at <1 percent RH, water is drawn from your skin creating humidity “puddles” in a dry room environment. To successfully identify and mitigate humidity puddles, advanced design tools need to be employed. For example, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modeling is used to understand airflow within a space and identify where humidity puddles are likely to occur. Then, your design team can take action by adjusting the air streams or adding additional equipment.
Related:Mining Giant and Tesla Agree on a Nickel Deal: Will Tesla Make its Own Batteries?
Choosing the Right Materials
In addition to using insulated metal panels with butyl seals and cam locks, airlocks at entry points, and sealed vapor barriers under floor slabs, it is also important to note that ultra-low humidity rooms can dry out traditional lubricants and sealants. So much so that if you install a door-closer that’s not designed for this type of space, the sealants can turn to powder over time. That’s why it’s vital to consider the effect of ultra-low humidity on all materials as they can potentially be impacted by this type of environment and compromise the room.
Challenge No. 2: Unique Hazards & Fire Protection Requirements
Another key differentiator in the design of battery manufacturing facilities is the ability to manage the unique hazards posed by the battery cells themselves. Understanding state of charge (SOC) is key to creating a safe working environment. During the manufacturing process, if cells get above 35 to 50 percent SOC, they must be treated as a fire hazard due to the energy density in a large number of stored cells. A manufacturing defect in a cell above 35 percent SOC, for instance, can create thermal runaway that will spread to nearby cells initiating a chain reaction.
Mitigation measures include elaborate fire protection systems such as gas detection equipment that identifies problems before thermal runaway occurs, extensive in-rack sprinkler systems, and even heat-seeking water cannons that target temperature increases before a fire starts. These systems are combined with more traditional life safety tools, such as firewalls separating different hazard classified areas.
Because of the unique nature of these plants, US building codes are only just now being developed for lithium-ion battery manufacturing. Previously, the codes were only established for battery storage systems and not for the manufacturing process. Therefore, it is important at the beginning of a project to prepare a life safety plan and fire protection approach for review with the local building and fire officials.
Challenge No. 3: Liaising with Process Equipment Vendors
Because the US is still catching up to battery-manufacturing technology, most of the process equipment that’s being installed in US battery manufacturing facilities comes from China, South Korea, and Japan. This means communicating across language barriers and time barriers—and many early-morning or evening meetings.
A big part of this challenge is technical translation. Ideally, you need engineers on your team who can bridge the language barrier. If they are not available a translator is necessary. However, a pure translator is not particularly effective since they don't know the technical nuances and therefore can’t translate the meaning. For this reason, it is critical to have someone on your team who’s not only technically experienced but also has the required linguistic skills.
Additionally, team members who are not bilingual need to appreciate the difference between what is said versus what is meant. This drives home the importance of patience and taking the time to truly understand what is being discussed—on both sides.
Video calls are important in bridging the language gap. When you see someone, even if you’re not speaking the same language or there's a translator between you, you can watch their body language, which is extremely valuable. Additionally, never understate the value of graphics—a picture is worth a million words when you’re trying to communicate across language barriers. Lastly, building in extra time for meetings is crucial. Bilingual technical meetings take at least twice as long as you would normally expect.
Challenge No. 4: High Electrical Demands
The final challenge when designing a large-scale battery manufacturing plant is very high electrical demands. In addition to normal manufacturing electrical demand, the formation stage of battery manufacturing requires the charging and discharging of each battery cell. This drives an unusually high electrical demand for these facilities, which will likely necessitate a new, dedicated substation. New substations require very long lead times, which will drive your schedule.
“Power-On” becomes a crucial date. Therefore, your team must have the ability to rapidly understand the electrical need and coordinate effectively with the utility supplier. These suppliers are often their “own masters” and operate independently of other governmental agencies. They are not used to working at the speed required by large-scale manufacturing operations. Bottom line—bring both your hard- and soft-skill sets to the table when coordinating with the utility company.
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A Recipe for Success
To effectively develop battery manufacturing plants, you need to successfully combine these four key challenges, which will evolve as technology advances. Already, we are exploring the direction these facilities might take over the next 10 years, such as smaller dry room environments, less intensive power use combined with recycling, significantly different building codes, and more sophisticated fire protection systems to name just a few of the advances we see on the horizon as we power toward an electric future.
David Verner, RA, NCARB is an executive vice president of Industrial at Gresham Smith, an architectural design firm located in the US.
For material handling managers and operators of forklift trucks alike, lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are becoming increasingly more popular for battery-powered electric vehicles. The primary reasons for this are that they don’t produce harmful emissions and they’re generally more energy-efficient than other available battery alternatives.
Li-ion batteries are described as having a high energy density due to the lithium inside them being highly reactive. There are many different lithium-ion battery types on the market and each type has different properties depending on the application of the battery.
Read on to learn more about the functionality, features, and benefits of Li-ion batteries.
7 key considerations of lithium-ion batteries
1. Cell type
TCM lithium-ion battery cell types are prismatic in NMC (Lithium Nickel Manganese Cobalt Oxide) chemistry and are packaged in a metal casing. A primary feature of prismatic Li-ion batteries is that they offer pressure vents that function to alleviate internal pressure which works to avoid unpredictable explosions in a warehouse or on-site.
The cell modules are controlled by an advanced battery management system (BMS) which balances cell status, and measures existing energy levels, temperature, and so on. The BMS communicates this to the battery charger via CAN (Controlled Area Network), which is a standardised electronic communication vehicle that allows electronic devices to communicate efficiently without the need for extensive wiring.
In case of error or failure, the BMS will shut down the power to the truck in a safe way.
2. Operating temperatures
Temperature is a critical factor as it has the potential to significantly impact the performance and application of Li-ion batteries. As different temperature conditions can result in different or adverse effects, getting to know a range of temperatures in this application is important for ensuring your batteries, and therefore your forklifts, are safe and in full working order.
Ambient temperature with full performance:
- Battery charging/discharging average temperature range: 0⁰C to +40⁰C
- Battery storage temperature range: 0⁰C to +40⁰C
- Li-ion charger temperature range: 0⁰C to +40⁰C
Ambient temperature with permanently reduced capacity and/or performance:
- Battery charging/discharging temperature range: -28⁰C to 0⁰C and +40⁰C to +55⁰C
- Battery storage cell temperature range: -20⁰C to 0⁰C and +40⁰C to +45⁰C
All continuous applications, -28⁰C to 0°C, are cold store applications with particular specifications and require a bespoke design. Get in touch with your local TCM dealer to find out more.
3. Charging systems
State-of-the-art Li-ion battery chargers are specifically designed to operate with the Li-ion battery product line. These batteries communicate with the battery management system via the CAN protocol. When the charger is connected to the battery, the BMS will shut down the truck’s vehicle control module (VCM) in around 5 seconds, before charging is automatically started.
As previously mentioned, Li-ion batteries offer maximum energy efficiency which is realised through a number of features:
State-of-the-art charging systems: energy efficiency which is realised via:
- a pioneering multi-resonance converter technology
- an intelligent activation management system for the charging modules when operating under a partial load
significantly reduced standby power consumption
Standby mode: this significantly reduces power consumption.
Intelligent activation management system: this functions for the charging modules operating under a partial load.
Encapsulated cooling: heat sinks are used when batteries/power semiconductors are being cooled. Along with cooling the Li-ion batteries, encapsulated cooling also works to keep dust and grime to a minimum.
‘In-service’ operations: chargers will continue to charge with reduced output even after the individual modules have been removed.
Mounting: Li-ion batteries are intended to be fitted on a wall with brackets for optimum safety and efficiency. These brackets are typically included in your package upon purchase.
4. Understanding charging times
A key advantage of lithium-ion batteries is that they’re able to offer rapid charging. However, this can be temperature-dependent. At a normal ambient temperature of +25⁰C, the batteries can be charged at 1C – which means fully charged in one hour.
‘C’ refers to the rate of charge and discharge. The capacity of a battery is typically rated at 1C, which means that a fully charged battery rated at 1Ah should provide 1A for one hour, for example.
For additional context, take a look at this table for some examples of alternative charging times:
5. Opportunity charge
Opportunity charging is a method wherein batteries are able to stay inside the forklift truck for multiple shifts while being charged. This is a standard procedure for Li-ion batteries. The battery management system protects the battery from harmful deep discharge as it will automatically alarm at a low state of charge (SOC) – reactively cutting the hydraulic lift system – and will later shut down the VCM truck computer to protect the truck, battery and operator.
When the Charger is connected to the battery, or if the built-in charger is connected to the mains supply, the truck will automatically shut down the VCM before the charging process starts. The battery must not physically be disconnected from the truck during opportunity charging.
Related read: Forklift Battery Charging Station Power Requirements Explained.
6. Equalising batteries and BDI
The process of balancing the battery, also known as equalising, helps to extend the battery’s life by re-balancing the concentration of electrolytes and ensuring all the cells are charged to their maximum potential. If no balancing process is frequently performed, the battery lifetime and remaining capacity will be reduced over time, making it less sustainable and, in turn, increasing your total cost of operation (TCO).
Battery balancing is carried out via a battery discharge indicator (BDI) which is connected to the battery with a CAN protocol indicating the battery’s SOC and highlighting any potential errors. It’s important to regularly conduct this process (a minimum of once a week) and ensure that the battery is connected to the charger until the BDI shows it’s fully charged for maximum output.
TCM forklift trucks are equipped with an extra battery discharge indicator mounted on the chassis.
7. Cost
No matter how efficient an item is, price always comes into play when deciding on which product to purchase. Whilst Li-ion batteries have a higher acquisition cost than alternatives such as lead-acid, they are more energy-efficient and sustainable meaning your business can make considerable savings in the long run.
Are you ready for 2030? Discover all of the steps you need to take to plan for an energy-efficient right here.
The key benefits of Li-ion batteries
For material handling organisations looking to adopt lithium-ion batteries, you can welcome a whole host of benefits.
- They consume less energy which contributes to a lower TCO
- They offer fast charging – within one hour – and can also be opportunity-charged, improving efficiency
- Their lifetime is typically 3-4 times longer than other battery alternatives such as lead-acid
- They don’t require maintenance or gassing, reducing cost and downtime
- They produce zero harmful emissions, meaning they are better for the health of the environment and your operators
- They don’t require mid-shift battery changes which increases productivity
- They have decentralised, accessible charging positions
- The internal resistance in the Li-ion battery is much lower than the likes of lead-acid, meaning that Li-ion batteries absorb regenerated energy very efficiently and contribute to extended driving cycles
Related read: Lead-Acid or Lithium-Ion: What's Powering Your Warehouse?
Why TCM’s solutions could be the right choice for your material handling operations
For our forklift trucks, we use NMC chemistry because it offers optimum battery lifetime, performance, and safety levels – for the forklift truck and the operator, too. The low maintenance requirements and the highly efficient performance of Li-ion batteries minimise interruptions, optimise productivity and preserve the truck’s residual value.
TCM forklifts utilise both lead-acid and Li-ion technology as each has its own unique benefits and drawbacks. However, we offer a range of modern Li-ion batteries – and their associated chargers – that are specially designed and tested to operate with the highest level of reliability and utilise the best available technology for optimum performance, safety and durability.
At TCM, we’re committed to helping you find the most efficient and cost-effective battery choice for your operations. For bespoke advice based on your personal circumstance, get in touch with your local TCM dealer here.
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