Effective battery technologies

Summary:
In the field of E-vehicles, batteries are
arguably the main component limiting the
industry's progression. We will be focusing on
the latest technology discovered by Tesla,
which is the tesla 4680 battery cell. The
previous batteries had a few issues one of the
major ones being that the thermal extraction
for the cooling of the cylindrical batteries was
done at the cylindrical body of the battery
which caused very high thermal resistivity
hence increasing the amount of power lost internally. The other problems include bulk internal resistance inside the
battery, large travel distance for the energy, huge bulk size, etc (articles highlighting the problems:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41578-019-0165-5 ,
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2013/ee/c3ee24086j ,
https://pubs.rsc.org/no/content/articlehtml/2018/ee/c8ee01053f ,
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.0c02584 ). Tesla aims to solve these problems and even further
improve on most of the aspects with their new 4680 battery technology by assuring: 6x more power than previous
battery technologies, 5x the energy, and more important for the minimum 16% more range.

Existing technology:
Tesla’s main focus is to work to improve the final product in all ways possible such as reduction of the cost to
make EV’s more accessible, finding environmentally sustainable and feasible alternatives to help the planet. With that in
mind let’s dive into the construction and working of the battery.

Anode:
silicon is the most
abundant material on
the earth’s crust after
oxygen. Sand is just
silicon dioxide. It has a
storage capability of 9x
times more lithium
than graphite.

The challenge with

silicon is, expands 4x
when charged with
lithium and becomes gooey after a few cycles. to overcome this tesla developed new chemistry to complement it. In
their own words :

“Stabilize the surface with an elastic ion-conducting polymer coating that’s applied through a very scalable approach”

-MR. Drew Baglino, vice president of technology, TESLA

Since raw silicon is being used it lowers the cost of silicon greatly and the process itself is far simpler and allows for more
silicon to be used in the cell. The result is a cheaper cell that boasts a higher capacity.

“That’s another 5% [cost] reduction at the battery pack level and a 20% increase in the range of the vehicles !” MR.
Baglino added.
Cathode:
today’s cathode production processes are
based on legacy chemistries and processes
developed in silos. Tesla’s new high-nickel
cathodes eliminate the need for cobalt.
Chemically speaking, cobalt is a fantastic
material for cathodes but it has its demerits,
the main one being the fact that there is no
sustainable source of cobalt as the vast
majority of cobalt production in the world comes from a single country the Democratic Republic of the Congo which
does not have a stable government and is very corrupt making cobalt very expensive and un acquirable for mass
purchase.

Nickel is the cheapest metal and has the

highest energy density but it needs to be
stabilized. The company is also not letting
nickel shortages get in its way by adopting a
“diversified cathode approach” . the
cathode is made specific to the battery’s
main use. If a long life cycle is the main
importance a mix of iron and nickel is used.
If the goal is to have longer mileage which is
more battery life per charge a mix of nickel
and manganese is used. If the battery is
going to be used to power a huge vehicle
that is more power output primarily nickel will be used as the material.

This new technology will eliminate cobalt usage and this results in a 15% lesser cost in cathode production. Another
crucial benefit is that, this new process results in zero-waste water.
The design :
Even though there are vast improvements in the
cathode and anode of the battery, the new
structural design itself is the sole reason for the
vast improvement and how the battery can
produce 5x the energy and 6x the power and way
less charging time. The cell has a tabless design
which eliminates the usage of tabs that were
welded onto the ends of the cylindrical cell. This
is an incredible breakthrough for the following
reasons :

It vastly reduces the travel

distance of the power and thus reduces internal resistance and power loss:
In a normal battery, the electrons have to travel the entire length of the jelly roll (the official name for the battery roll )
to then exit the cell via the tabs. For example, if u consider the previous design (18650 cells) they have to travel a
distance of 800 mm but in the new tabless design since there are no tabs the electrons travel a distance of only the
width of the jelly role which is just 80mm for the 4680 battery cells. This vastly reduces the internal resistance of the
cell. The older cells had an internal resistance of the order 20m ohms but the 4680 cells have much much lower
resistance in the order of 0.1m ohms.

The cooling process of the cell is very efficient :

The heat produced in a cylindrical cell flows axially that is from the top
of the cell to the bottom hence the best way to extract the heat from the
cells to
cool them
would be in
the same
axial
direction
from top to
bottom.
But in the previous designs, this was not possible due to
the presence of the tabs as simply they cannot undergo
such high temperatures and will break, and hence the
only way to extract the heat to cool the cells was to do it
along the sides of the cell which is a very inefficient
process as the thermal resistance was incredibly high
and as a result lot of energy was wasted due to this apart
from the already existing internal resistance problem. but
now with the tabless design, we can overcome this
problem very easily. now we can just add a common heat
sync at the bottom of the battery to absorb the heat
from the battery, where the heat is extracted axially or
simply put along the general path of heat flow hence
there is close to none thermal resistance. there are few
design options for connecting the heat sync with
batteries, the best one is just adding small spike shapes
at the bottom which will penetrate the heat sync.

In the previous design, the internal power loss of the cell per 10amps is 2 watts which is almost 5% of the power per
cycle of the battery. But in the 4680 the internal power loss is 0.2 watts per 10 amps this is due to the drastic reduction
in thermal resistance and the internal resistance of the cell by a huge magnitude

All of the above changes and innovations all add up to give

us the advantages mentioned below:
 As mentioned earlier 6x times the power, 5x the energy, faster recharging
rates, and of course especially in the case of tesla 16x times the range per
charge.
 14% improvement in cost/kWh coming from the change in cell form factor.
 18% improvement in cost/kWh as a result of the 10× manufacturing
footprint reduction and 10× manufacturing energy consumption reduction.
 5% improvement in cost/kWh coming from the increased utilization of
silicon in the battery cells.
 12% reduction in
cost/kWh coming from
improvements in the
cathode material.

All of the above information provided apart

from the calculation is acquired directly from tesla via their patent and info booklets. If u need any further
information on the cell such as the perfect chemical composition of the cathode and anode or the official calculation
please refer to the official tesla patent for the 4680 battery:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200144676A1/en?oq=20200144676
Tackling the problems :
Manufacturing the cell:
even though the cells design is so simple and
the manufacturing process is far easier and
simpler compared to the older generation,
simple is hard. This is because this is an entirely
new type of battery and thus has an entirely
new type of manufacturing process. just
because we have a working process does not
mean it’s an efficient process and the best way
for mass production. Similary even though 4680
batteries are already under mass production
Elon himself has stated that the method can be
much more refined and efficient, in his own words “it is working but not at a high yield”. He said that the machines
currently being used are the fourth generation models and that in just two more upgrades we will; have the final refined
most efficiently manufacturing machines. Refining a process comes from experience and real-life analysis over a period
of time so there is not much of a solution that can be provided by third parties such as ourselves as it can be done only
by the people at the facility constantly working on it.

Lithium sources :
One of the key points of the battery in and of itself is that it can hold more lithium ions in it which then results in all the
advantages. The process of lithium production can be easily made more sustainable and cheap. This is because it can be
extracted from clay. This is because it contains large amounts of lithium oxide and can be easily extracted with simple
processes such as froth flotation or high-intensity magnetic separation. for more information on this please refer to this
scientific article published by researchers from the Camborne School of mines:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0892687511002925#!

this is a huge advantage as

Nevada which is a state
made mostly of vast lands
of desert which compose
primarily of clay and hence
is a massive source of
lithium and can produce
battery sources which will
have so much power that, if
we use it to make EV
batteries alone it can easily
convert the entire
transportation system into electric vehicles and still have excess. This also means that for tesla in particular the cost of
acquiring lithium is going to be significantly less as it is now produced locally and has minimal transportation expenses.

These are the two current challenges in the technology which were highlighted mostly and
there may be future problems that might arise but there is no challenge which we cannot
overcome if we put our mind to it
Thank you
Project head: Moses John Wesley J 13028 , asst/teammate: Pranesh S 13247