Albemarle, a global leader in lithium production, is opening its new Battery Materials Innovation Center in North Carolina, Kallanish reports.

The state-of-the-art laboratory joins the company’s research and development facilities at Kings Mountain, North Carolina. It is expected to be fully operational in July 2021 and will facilitate needed testing for the company. It is part of a campus of 323.7 hectares in western North Carolina.

The lab will support Albemarle’s lithium hydroxide, lithium carbonate and advanced energy storage materials growth platforms. It has been equipped to enable synthesis of new materials, material properties characterisation and analysis, material scale-up capabilities and material integration into battery cells for performance testing, the company says.

The facility includes a dry room with a multi-layer pouch cell line that can create cellphone-sized batteries to demonstrate critical elements of battery performance of new products to customers. The lab will also develop lithium metal anode technologies that will increase battery energy density by utilising advanced lithium metal rolling to achieve lithium foils 20 microns thin (about one-fifth the average thickness of human hair) or thinner, it says. The team plans to demonstrate lithium foils as thin as 3-5 microns using new technologies currently being developed, Albemarle says.

“The completion of the Battery Materials Innovation Center provides us with realistic and relevant cell building capabilities to generate meaningful data for next-gen battery material design,” says Glen Merfeld, the company’s chief technology officer. “With this new resource, we will be equipped to optimise our lithium materials for a drop-in solution for customers that help them deliver high-performance, cost-effective batteries for the rapidly growing electric vehicle market.”

The company is working to double energy density and reduce costs by 50% through advancements in lithium recovery and lithium-ion battery performance, Merfeld said on 14 June at a roundtable discussion hosted by the US Department of Energy.

Albemarle, with headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina, is the only US-based producer of lithium metal anodes. It is a speciality chemical company involved in lithium, bromine and refining catalysts.