Battery Powder Production

Powder production is often the rate limiting step in thermal battery production. The current powder production technique for lithium-based alloys and electrolyte is costly, labor intensive, time consuming, and leads to highly variable product. Because of the extremely reactive nature of these materials, advances in this area are difficult because of the special care that must be taken in the selection of atmosphere and other process conditions. Direct melt-to-powder atomization practices are effectively used in the powder metallurgy industry to produce large volumes of high quality product. In this Phase I, we will prove the feasibility of adapting a similar process that is free of moving parts in the process stream. Our proposed innovation reduces the manual handling required, particularly in the molten state, and will lead to lower costs and higher quality. In Phase I, we will construct a facility to evaluate the design and process control parameters of the atomizer using a simulant. In Phase II, we will construct a dedicated powder production facility for the actual battery materials and use it to produce powder at prototypical production rates. This powder will be pressed into pellets that will be inserted into batteries and tested.