Nordbatt 2017 presented a wide variety of battery activities in the Nordic countries. From Finland, several presentations were given by the mining industry, including Freeport Cobalt (10 % of world production of Cobalt), Boliden (Zinc plant and recycling of electronic scrap and lead-acid batteries) and Keliber (High purity Li2CO3). Among others, Freeport Cobalt showed their precipitated NMC precursors that they have developed in the past years. Many high-level scientific presentations were given by the Swedish participants, including Professor Kristina Edström and Professor Daniel Brandell from Uppsala University. Kristian Kvamme from University of Oslo (PhD student at Ola Nilsson, former speaker at the Danish Battery Symposium) presented LiPO coating on LFP cathodes with their improved atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique with low temperature (max 225C), no ozone and the ability to coat a 3D substrate (e.g. an electrode).
Three presentations were given by Danish scientists. Associate professor at DTU Juan Maria Garcia Lastra gave a talk on calculational screening of battery materials, Associate professor at Aarhus University Anders Bentien gave a talk about his work on commercializing vanadium redox flow batteries in the company VisBlue, and principal scientist at Haldor Topsøe A/S Jonathan Højberg gave a talk on the development of the high voltage cathode material LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4.
During the conference, it was clear that European alliances are forming among the big companies in order to ensure the future technology and supply chain. The “Airbus for batteries” alliance was announced (here) only a few days before the conference. Current participants in this collaboration are Daimler, Siemens, BASF and Renault among others. VW, Saft, Continental AG and Umicore have shown interest in joining. The European funding initiative ‘Education, innovation and technology’ EIT Raw Materials also gave a presentation.
In the past year, interest in European battery factories has increased. Based on presentations at the conference, the planned production in Europe in 2025 is 78 GWh:
- NorthVolt (Consortium) 32 GWh in Sweden in 4 phases (First phase December 2020. One year between following phases)
- TerraE (Early stage consortium) 40 GWh in Germany – more info here
- Saft (France) produced batteries for 1 MWh/2 MW battery in Finland
- CATL (China) intends to expand into European EV market
- Samsung (Korean) production in Hungary. Batteries for 50k EV
- LG Chem (Korean) production in Poland. 100k batteries
- A123 (Michigan, USA) production in Check Republic. 600k batteries for EVs
The Danish Battery Society was represented at Nordbatt 2017 by Jonathan Højberg, who has also been a member of the scientific committee of the conference. As the final point on the agenda, Jonathan announced that the next Nordbatt 2019 conference will be hosted by the Danish Battery Society at the Technical University of Denmark. The date will be September 25-27, 2019.
