Creating batteries requires reacting and mixing materials. Although batch mixing is capable of kneading high-viscosity materials used for the electrodes and electrolytes of most batteries, continuous mixing processors offer many advantages that can help your business.
How Continuous Mixer Processors Improve Battery Performance
The end product is only as good as the raw materials and the fabrication processes used. When compared with batch mixing, continuous mixing has been found to offer more uniform dispersion. With batteries, more uniform material dispersion results in efficient, dense electrodes. Better electrodes offer a range of benefits, including:
- Better electron transport: With continuous mixers, carbon black and other conductive additives are better dispersed because these mixers are more precise and twin-screw mixing prevents over-shear, resulting in a homogeneous paste with fewer voids. This improves battery performance and capacity by increasing electrical conductivity.
- Reduced internal resistance: More efficient electrodes mean better conductivity, with less overheating and power loss.
- Higher energy density: In addition to creating more efficient electrodes, continuous processes can handle materials with higher viscosity than batch mixers. The higher solids loading in the slurry often results in higher energy density.
- Longer life cycle: With uniform dispersion of active materials, fewer materials cluster, improving the battery lifespan by reducing mechanical degradation.
- Improved safety: With stronger and denser electrodes, your batteries may have higher mechanical strength, reducing charging damage and improving the reliability of batteries.
- Enhanced electrode properties: Dry processes allow for even distribution of binders and conductive additives, enhancing electrodes’ mechanical properties. A batch mixer sometimes breaks down binders, which can affect the adhesion of conductive agents and active materials. Continuous mixers are gentler, reducing delamination by ensuring particle adhesion.
Another benefit of continuous mixers is that they can help in creating a bubble-free and uniform electrode coating, which enables you to develop batteries with efficient electron paths and reliable battery storage. This, in turn, creates more dependable batteries and faster, more reliable charging without cracking.
Better Batteries With Process Benefits
Mixing methods can affect the energy density and other advantages of solid-state batteries (SSBs), but creating a better battery also means developing a production process that reduces flaws and delivers cost savings you can pass on to customers. Here is how continuous mixing processors can help you improve your process and produce better batteries of all types:
- Reduce defects: Continuous mixers achieve an even distribution of materials by breaking down agglomerates more efficiently than batch mixers. They also reduce the errors that can occur with manual loading. As a result, your electrodes and coatings are more consistent, improving battery capacity and reducing failures.
- Produce more batteries: Batch mixers have built-in downtime during loading and unloading, but continuous mixers enable high-volume, continuous production, helping you meet customer demand.
- Reduce the risk of contamination: Contamination and impurities can pose safety risks, such as lithium-ion battery fires. Since continuous processes are closed, there is less of a risk of contamination. An enclosed system can also reduce the risk of moisture entering the mix, thereby reducing oxidation and air entrapment.
- Lower energy use and costs: Continuous mixers require less solvent than batch mixers, helping reduce energy use during drying. In addition, with precise mixing chambers and fewer shutdowns, continuous mixers can save on energy costs when compared with batch mixers, especially at high production volumes.
- Improve oversight and cut waste: You can maintain strict quality control and make real-time adjustments as needed to temperature, shaft speed, residence time, shear, and viscosity. Smaller mixing chambers, compared with batch mixers, allow you to minimize waste if a problem arises.
Why Choose Readco Kurimoto for Battery Industrial Mixing Equipment?
At Readco Kurimoto, our team can customize mixing solutions for even the most advanced batteries. Top original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) already work with us, and we can make sure your mixer processors integrate with existing or automated equipment. Our continuous mixers can help at many stages of battery production for lithium-ion batteries, hydrogen fuel cells, solid-state batteries, and more.
We have decades of experience in the battery sector, helping enhance product safety, improve efficiency and productivity, and create more reliable products. We have developed lithium-ion battery paste mixing solutions, dry blending and solid-state battery powder solutions, and other applications. Our mixer processors can mix, shear, and blend with very low moisture content, and we have extensive experience in high-stakes industries with no margin for error.
As the sector shifts, working with Readco Kurimoto means you have a partner who can help your production lines stay efficient today and continue to scale for customers tomorrow.
Contact Us
Our process development laboratory is here to collaborate with you to develop solutions for your specific needs. When you work with us, you receive a comprehensive report and proof of concept, so you know the process will work in your plant.
Contact our team today to learn more about our capabilities and to review your needs.