Sustainable values and the world digitalization have led to increasing demand of batteries globally. The batteries won’t be just lead batteries as used to be for a century. Instead of that there are used several different other metals like lithium, cobalt, nickel which can be found from different places in the world. The same metals exist also in Nordic ground which has created a good business potential for the local companies in refining them further.
Manufacturing (refining) process of battery raw materials is complex and multiphase. This means that the footprint area of the battery production facility will be rather large. Manufacturing cost efficiency demand means that you can’t accept whatever height for the building either, so the plant layout will consist of multiple materials lifting up stages rather than utilizing straightforward “gravity flow” idea. Respectively this will have an effect on process and selected dosing equipment for instance, specifically the increased number of needed parallel equipment.
What are the important things to consider when planning a battery raw material processing?
Manufacturing process includes several process stages and the materials in different phases can be oxides, hydroxides, some dry loose materials, moist granulates and moist flakes etc. This battery raw materials’ physical handling properties variation combined to the usage of “weighed screws” as well as various integrated rotary and gravimetric feeder / pneumatic conveying systems or other rather complex methods to dose and control such demanding battery raw materials really sets high technology and performance edge for equipment suppliers selection.
It is important to emphasize such dosing systems and particularly, the complexity related in the required dosing and feeding accuracy topped with process system’s dynamic requirements that material handling equipment must comply. E.g. very well fluidized bulk materials, coarse granules and adhesive flakes are problematic ones and require demanding volumetric feeding properties from the feeding / dosing equipment itself.
One must keep in mind that battery raw materials refining process consists mainly of continuous dosing and feeding applications rather than “batch type” which means that the used dosing equipment need to fulfill both stabile volumetric and accurate gravimetric performance at the same time. This also substantially complicates the process control system software and hardware design.
Dosed, mixed and otherwise processed battery raw materials, ie the “internal end product”, are temporarily stored in big bags or containers. This includes various weighing, dosing and feeding applications, such as big bag filling and unloading equipment and various surface measurement systems related to internal materials logistics control and management systems. The same dosing and weighing systems are therefore used both for the treatment of battery metals and for their further processing at a later stage.
Download the guide to battery industry’s weighing and dosing solutions
In this guide, we tell you about the factors to consider when choosing weighing or dosing solutions for the battery industry.
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