A Perspective on Cell Bill of Materials Using BatPaC
Isabella D. R. Stephens, Peter R. Slater, Emma Kendrick
Abstract
With the development of new technology in the battery sector, it is increasingly important to be able to predict and compare the potential of developments, particularly in energy density, cost and sustainability. Assessing any of these requires detailed breakdowns of the contents of a comparable battery pack, module and cells. This perspective article aims to provide a bill of materials (BOM) for 14 current and next generation battery technologies, using the Argonne Labs BatPaC software and specifying what the voltage used is at the beginning of life. The BOM is not specified towards a particular automotive case, and hence changes the model average voltage used compared to Argonne lab BatPaC software. The BOM gives comparable cells targeted at energy rather than power, which have 5 mA/cm 2 cathode, the N:P ratio 1.1:1, and a 0.25 kWh cell from a 100 kWh pack, with 25 % porosity. This approach enables sustainability assessments to be made using these comparable cells of current and emerging technologies without assumption on the aging process or automotive use case, and hence provides an avenue to widen the discussion from R&D lab to scale up. • Bill of materials were produced for 14 current and next generation battery technologies. • These reflect material usage at the beginning of life. • Assumptions around cell aging and hence oversizing are removed. • The foundation for comparing next generation battery material usage is provided.