Path of battery intelligent manufacturing realization

Through standardization, digitization, intelligence, relying on the Internet of Things, industrial interconnection, big data and other emerging technologies, the digital transformation and construction of the traditional production line, to achieve efficiency improvement and cost reduction, has become the road to large-scale, high-quality manufacturing of power battery equipment.

Throughout the development of China's power battery manufacturing history, power battery manufacturing technology has gradually moved from semi-automatic to large-scale, digital, intelligent manufacturing,best lithium ion battery machine company manufacturing efficiency and manufacturing qualification rate is constantly improving.

Despite the rapid development of the domestic power battery industry, there are still some problems in the manufacturing industry. From the perspective of the global value chain, the core competitiveness of China's industry is still not strong, on the one hand, China can not continue to rely on the development model of demographic dividend at the beginning of the 21st century, that is, the disappearance of cheap labor. On the other hand, the automation and intelligence level of the industry is still lower than that of developed countries, which is manifested in the low qualification rate, low material utilization rate and low capacity utilization rate of battery manufacturing, which can't satisfy the new energy automobile market's high-speed growth of power battery production capacity, especially the urgent demand for high-end capacity.

Intelligent manufacturing is the trend of power battery production, based on a high degree of automation to fully realize the digital,equipment for lithium battery assembly networked and intelligent, in order to achieve the power battery manufacturing "high precision, high speed, high reliability" development goals.

From the first principle of basic research ideas, to accelerate the transformation of intelligent technology can be realized in the following three directions:

1. standardization

Accumulator battery technology started late, its design, manufacturing, inspection, the use of a lack of complete standards, especially for lithium battery industry equipment interoperability standards, integrated interfaces, integrated functions, integrated capacity standards, field equipment and system integration, system integration, system interoperability and other integration standards are seriously lacking. In the face of the new situation of storage battery intelligent manufacturing development, new opportunities, new challenges, it is necessary to systematically sort out the existing relevant basic standards, clear storage battery integrated manufacturing requirements, from the storage battery industry's basic commonality, key technologies and applications, to establish a set of standards to support the healthy and orderly development of the storage battery industry system.

First, to standardize the battery size specifications. At present, more than 80 domestic energy storage battery enterprises have more than 150 kinds of battery specifications and models, which means that more than 150 kinds of different production processes and production lines are needed, seriously limiting the improvement of the scale manufacturing capacity of energy storage battery. At present, we should summarize the past experience and the damage caused to our industry, and formulate the size specifications of energy storage batteries as soon as possible. It is necessary to limit the battery specifications to about 10 types.

Secondly, in order to achieve the design and standardization of energy storage batteries, it is necessary to establish metadata standards for energy storage batteries.

Finally, it is necessary to standardize the manufacturing of energy storage batteries. The manufacturing process of energy storage batteries is complex, with a long process and many production equipment on the production line. And the production equipment on the same production line is often from different equipment manufacturers, using different communication interfaces and protocols, the lack of interconnection between the equipment basis. It is necessary to establish a battery manufacturing process data dictionary standard, unify the equipment model, formulate equipment communication interface specifications, carry out data governance, realize the integration of production line equipment and enterprise information system, realize the deep integration of OT and IT, use the industrial Internet platform to realize the integration of internal and external information of the enterprise, and optimize the battery manufacturing resource allocation and process control.

2.Modeling

Mathematical model is the basis of intelligence, is the manufacturing plant, materials, machines, processes into a computer can identify, optimize, enhance the basic means. Energy storage battery manufacturing needs to be established including battery model, factory model, equipment model, process model, and quality model.

Modeling is the basis of digital manufacturing, which needs to be able to accurately and completely describe the real properties of the object. Modeling and digitization are complementary processes, there are theoretical models of the process and physical quantities can be used as a model to digitize the existing model; if there is no model or physical quantities or processes are difficult to describe with accurate theoretical models, you can first collect data, through digital analysis to establish a digital model, to solve the numerical calculations and quality optimization in the manufacturing process, which is also a digital, intelligent manufacturing dividend.

3.Digitalization

The energy storage battery industry needs to establish a digital development system, including digital design, digital manufacturing and digital applications. The figure below shows the digital development system for energy storage battery.

Digital design: Battery design includes material design, structural design and process design. In the battery design process, the need to apply professional product design tools and structural design tools, the need to establish electrochemical simulation models and battery life models.

Digital manufacturing: including process planning, equipment development, system integration, etc.. It is necessary to use factory simulation, process simulation, virtual debugging and other technical means to establish a digital twin mapping system between the actual production process and the virtual production process. Designers use the simulation environment provided by the software to design and optimize products and production processes, thereby accelerating the cycle from concept to production, reducing errors and lowering costs.

Digital technology applications: including closed-loop control of battery quality, establishment of battery traceability information system, and product big data analysis. Digital application research requires us to establish a resource management accounting application service platform for the whole life cycle analysis data such as battery design, manufacturing, quality traceability and ladder utilization.

Through the establishment of digital design, manufacturing and application process system of battery, we can realize high-efficiency design, high-quality, low-cost manufacturing and reliable safety control.