Cost Model for the Footprint Planning of Production Environments in Lithium-Ion Battery Production

The growing demand for lithium-ion batteries necessitates detailed cost models to assess the production costs and enhance the economic viability of battery-powered applications. In light of the energy-consuming production environments, accurate footprint calculation enables the uncovering of inefficiencies, contributing to minimizing the environmental and economic impacts. This work presents a footprint modeling approach for a large-scale lithium-ion battery production. An existing cost model is extended to incorporate a process-based footprint calculation. The model includes data from expert interviews and supplier quotations, covering parameters for dry rooms operating at varying dew points, clean rooms, and inert gas microenvironments. This allows for a comprehensive calculation of the full costs and the energy consumption associated with different production environments. A case study shows that high-capacity cathode active materials like NMC811 can reduce overall cell costs despite requiring a more stringent moisture control in production. The study reveals that the dry room is the primary energy consumer and that utilizing inert gas microenvironments can lower the energy consumption, although accompanied by higher full costs. Moreover, an impact analysis of the buffer storage sizes and energy prices indicates minor effects on the full costs of the cells but significant operational savings for the cell manufacturer.