It often feels as though electric vehicles went from niche to commonplace overnight. And as much as the general public is feeling that shift, manufacturers are feeling it even more. The demand for lithium batteries, and the raw materials to power them, has seen an incredible increase. This shift has created a stress point, forcing manufacturers to speed production to keep up, but has also created an incredible opportunity for those organizations ready to capitalize on it.
Emerson’s Kenny Marks explores the lithium battery market expansion in his recent article in Automation.com. Kenny shares that many manufacturers are building process knowledge in every stage of the lithium battery supply chain—mining, refining, chemical processing, and manufacturing. The future of EV manufacturing will be built on the innovation that comes from the process knowledge those teams are building, if they can do it cost effectively and efficiently.
Much of this knowledge, as well as a lot of the industry’s innovation, is coming from small pilot projects organizations are using to prove out their strategies. But, Kenny explains, these pilots can’t rely on traditional project engineering. Those processes can be too costly and time consuming for pilots that may or may not prove successful. Lithium battery manufacturers need solutions that allow them to start small, and scale easily as their projects demonstrate success.
Scalable solutions
The solution, Kenny shares, is to capitalize on modern technologies that offer scalable automation solutions from pilot to production-scale. Kenny explains,
“Forward-thinking teams are eliminating risk from their pilots by selecting proven, future-proof control technologies designed to scale alongside their projects. Modern, scalable automation platforms can more easily grow to deliver a level of automation customized to the context of the user’s operations, with built-in flexibility to meet changing needs.”
Scalable control systems like Emerson’s DeltaV™ Flex System combine subscription services with smaller, modular control system options to provide exactly that flexibility. But don’t let the smaller size fool you. DeltaV Flex Systems are fully featured DeltaV control systems. They are configured using the same tools and are operated with the same human machine interface as a full-scale DeltaV distributed control system.
Teams can start small using a DeltaV Flex System and scale up at will, essentially copying the configuration over to a new system each time they need to scale up. Kenny explains,
“With class-based configuration, once the team has landed on the right control strategy, all the engineering effort can be saved as a class and instantiated quickly in the following projects. Teams also frequently use class-based configuration for operator displays, building graphical elements around operations requirements, and then utilizing them in every iteration of the project.”
Easy integration
Another benefit of leveraging built-for-purpose scalable systems is the ability to integrate advanced functionality at will. In a traditional solution, technologies like advanced process control, simulation, and more would need to be added on as separate packages, requiring complicated, fragile engineering for connectivity. The DeltaV Flex System, however, will either have those technologies built in, or they will seamlessly integrate just as they would with a full-scale control system. Creating initial configuration and tiebacks will take minutes rather than days, weeks, or months.
Chasing innovation
The coming years of lithium battery manufacturing will be defined by innovation, and innovation requires flexibility. As companies develop promising technologies, they will want to scale them quickly and easily, and the way to do that, Kenny explains, is by building flexibility into the automation system from the very first moments of operation.
Kenny shares more detail on the way pilot projects and flexible control technologies are changing every stage of the lithium battery value chain in the full article over at Automation.com. Read it in its entirety to learn about additional valuable technologies and to see some practical examples.
