Calendering Equipment for UKBIC Flexible Industrialisation Line (FIL)

The UKBIC Flexible Industrialisation Line is designed to allow staged scale-up of electrode manufacture from laboratory scale through to GWh scale on UKBIC’s existing high-volume electrode lines. The project will be phased and in the first phase equipment will be purchased to allow scale-up of electrode processes from the Flexible Industrialisation Line to UKBIC’s high-volume electrode lines. This will incorporate mixing process compatible with UKBIC’s mainline process and coating and drying equipment which will take batches of slurry and convert them onto anode and cathode foils.

Subsequent equipment will incorporate next generation electrode manufacturing processes, so solutions covering both scenarios are encouraged. This new electrode capability will be supplemented by flexible equipment to Calender and slit the electrode reels allowing them to be converted into cells using the main UKBIC cylindrical and pouch cell assembly lines, or other flexible cell manufacturing equipment that may be installed during a later phase. Calendering Equipment is specifically required to allow UKBIC to process Anode and Cathode electrodes from its own in-house Coating processes or from third party material produced external to UKBIC.

UKBIC currently has Calendering equipment in its Volume Industrialisation Line allowing for segregated Calendering of Anode and Cathode material however the size of the equipment is desired for Electrode Material at high levels of maturity and/or on a mass production scale. As a result, UKBIC is looking to install smaller equipment for customers at lower maturity level and allow for added flexibility and modularity as such that new/missing technologies from UKBICs Volume Industrialisation line can be used and proven.

The Calendering equipment will be installed in a new internal Clean Room facility to UKBIC and should allow for futureproofing with the known assumption of battery industry evolution and changes.