New specialist equipment for battery developers and manufacturers is now operational at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre (UKBIC).

The cell cyclers and environmental chambers installed at the Coventry-based battery development facility enable developers to continuously charge and discharge cylindrical and pouch cells, and measure how many cycles a battery cell can deliver over its life.

Housed inside a 135m² air-conditioned unit, the cyclers feature custom-made racking and cell fixtures designed to perform high-accuracy cell characterisations in different environmental conditions. The 15A cylindrical cell cycler has 192 channels and the 100A pouch cell cycler has 96 channels.

The cyclers include extended lifecycle testing, in Binder EUCAR* hazard level 6 chambers that can be environmentally controlled and measured, and the ability to give customers the opportunity to try out new chemistries, to validate cell designs and trial new cell materials, all in one location.

Sean Gilgunn, UKBIC’s Managing Director, said: “The cell cyclers will be a huge asset to the UK battery industry, helping us become a one stop shop for.”

Richard LeCain, UKBIC’s Chief Technology Officer, added: “The new cyclers will help make UKBIC’s world-class scale-up facilities an even more attractive proposition to battery developers, allowing performance to be independently validated and risk to be reduced.”

The equipment is the first in a series of upgrades to UKBIC, totalling £74m. Funded through the Faraday Battery Challenge by UK Research and Innovation, other enhancements in the pipeline are:

• An expanded battery development laboratory, which is due to be operational in early 2025;
• A clean and dry zone where customers can rent areas for their own development and testing purposes, which is also due to open in 2025; and
• A flexible pilot line to bridge the gap between UKBIC’s industrial scale offering and small-scale demonstrators available elsewhere, which will open in Summer 2025.
  
  

The Faraday Battery Challenge is a £610m investment programme which supports world-class scientific technology development and manufacturing scale-up capability for batteries in the UK. The Challenge supports world-class scientific technology development and manufacturing scale-up capability for batteries in the UK.

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* EUCAR is the European Council for Automotive R&D of the major European passenger car and commercial vehicle manufacturers. EUCAR facilitates and coordinates pre-competitive research and development projects and its members participate in a wide range of collaborative European R&D programmes.

Notes to editor:

To arrange an interview, please email richard.robinson@ukbic.co.uk or phone +44 (0) 7503 628892

UKBIC is the UK’s national manufacturing battery development facility, providing manufacturing scale-up and skills for the battery sector.

The purpose-built facility is where businesses develop their battery manufacturing processes at the scale they need to move to industrial production and where those working in the industry can develop new skills by working on the production line, alongside UKBIC’s specialist teams.

Created with an initial investment of £130m, an additional £74m has now been committed by UK Research and Innovation to enhance the facility by installing a new pilot line to bridge the gap between UKBIC’s larger scale offering and small-scale demonstrators available elsewhere. Funding is also being used to support the construction of a new battery development laboratory, a clean and dry zone, and cell cyclers.

Opened in July 2021, the Coventry-based facility can be accessed by organisations with existing or new battery technology, or companies looking at entering the industry. UKBIC doesn’t retain customer IP.

UKBIC’s construction was part-funded through the West Midlands Combined Authority and was originally delivered through a consortium of Coventry City Council, Coventry and Warwickshire Local Enterprise Partnership and WMG, at the University of Warwick.