COVERC fOeVaEtRu freea MtuArReI NbEa tTtEeCrHieNsOLOGY
these project are
attracting interest
from car and battery
manufacturers. That
tells me we’re doing
something right
expected to begin operation shortly.
There is also some interesting activity at the lower-volume
end of the scale, perhaps most notably through HyperBat a joint
venture between Unipart and Williams Advanced Engineering
to manufacture batteries for high performance electric cars
including Aston Martin’s Rapid E.
And it’s not all about automotive. Battery pack assembly
specialist HyperDrive, which is based next door to the Envision
ASEC factory in Sunderland, has enjoyed unprecedented growth
by developing battery packs and battery management systems
for customers including JCB and cherry-picker specialist
Snorkel - a reminder that the opportunity for UK battery
manufacturers is expanding all of the time. “We’re hanging on
the coat-tails of the huge investment in automotive battery
cells and we’ve engineered our product around those,” said
Hyperdrive MD and founder Stephen Irish.
Perhaps surprisingly, the UK also has some of the key
elements of the battery supply chain already in place in the
form of some of the largest suppliers of materials for producing
electrodes and electrolytes. “We have a chemicals
industry in the UK that is potentially well set up to
supply into a battery manufacturing industry,” said
Morris. “They’ll need to invest and make slightly
different products, but we already export graphite
to China so that they can make batteries to sell back
to us!” Pointing to a 2019 report commissioned by
the Advanced Propulsion Centre and Innovate UK
(Automotive Batteries - April 2019) he added that a
scale up of UK battery manufacture would provide
a major boost for this sector, potentially opening up
£4.8bn per year market share.
Other less immediately obvious attractions
include the UK’s relatively nimble approach to
planning and infrastructure development - a key
factor for ambitious Asian battery giants not used
to too many obstacles ; and also the growing role
of renewables in the energy mix. “There’s no point
making loads of batteries from dirty coal fired power
station in Poland,” he said. “It’s definitely on the mind
of the battery manufacturers.”
Perhaps the biggest strength though, from Morris’
perspective, is the strength of the UK research base, and the
degree to which different academic and industry groups are
collaborating with each other. And the Faraday Institution,
which was established to accelerate the commercial impact of
this research base, is at the heart of this dynamic.
Since being established in 2017, the body has launched nine
major research programmes spanning 22 universities and
involving multiple industry partners, any one of which, said
Morris, could develop into a world leading battery technology
company.
A number of these projects are focused on improving
the performance of lithium-ion batteries. For instance, The
University of Sheffield led FutureCat project, and the University
of Bath’s CATMAT initiative are both at looking at ways of
improving the cathode to get more energy into the battery.
Another initiative, led by the University of Cambridge – is
exploring the causes of battery degradation and failure in order
improve the microstructure without
changing any of the materials we might
get significantly better performance and
that means having significantly better
control over the manufacturing,” he
explained.
All of this activity, said Morris, is
helping to build the UK’s profile on
the world stage: “These projects are
May 2020 / www.theengineer.co.uk 14
attracting interest from car and battery
manufacturers. That tells me we’re doing
something right, and it has the potential
of attracting some of them to invest
here. I know there is at least one battery
manufacturer who sees having early
access to having some of the technology
we might develop as being a potential
incentive to come here.”
Whilst the Faraday Institution is
driving the development of new battery
technologies, another Faraday Challenge
funded initiative – the UK Battery
Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC) - is
exploring the challenges of taking these
technologies into production.
From its 20,000 square metre facility
close to Coventry airport, the £129m
centre, which was grown out of work
to try to understand how to extend the
life of batteries.
There are also a number of projects
looking at different battery technologies.
Researchers at St Andrews University, for
instance, are exploring the potential of
Sodium Ion batteries, whilst the Oxford
led SOLBAT initiative is making major
strides in solid state battery development
– something of a holy grail for energy
storage. “They are potentially much
higher performance and much safer
because they don’t have a flammable
liquid electrolyte,” said Morris.
A further project, Nextrode, also led
by Oxford, is looking at how battery
performance could be enhanced
by improvements in electrode
manufacturing processes. “If we can
Electrode
manufacturing in
progress at WMG
UKBIC’s 20,000 square
metre facility in the outskirts
of Coventry
/www.theengineer.co.uk