Scaling up production of Fennac in 2022
In 2023, Altris’ first industrial production facility, Ferrum, will begin producing the ground-breaking cathode material Fennac in Sandviken, Sweden. Ferrum will annually produce 2000 metric tonnes of Fennac, enabling 1GWh of sustainable sodium-ion batteries to enter the market each year. Until this facility is up and running, however, Altris needs scale-up existing production of Fennac to meet customer demands already in 2022.
Last year, Altris was selected by InnoEnergy as one of the winning applications for a 2-year innovation project that aims to do just this. The InnoEnergy’s Innovation Project initiative selects companies with sustainable energy innovations that have high commercial potential and provides them with investment funding, support to identify market needs and potential customers, as well as access to 500+ project partners to support the development of new products. The project focuses specifically on two areas: production scale-up / commercialisation of Fennac, as well as performance and safety testing. The upscaling of Fennac production through this project is seen as a key step in the preparation of building Ferrum.
Altris is thankful to be joined by two heavyweight partners to realise this project. Ahlstrom-Munksjö, a French manufacturer of fiber-based products that will provide heat-resistant separators for the Fennac-based battery cells. CIDAUT, the Foundation for Transport and Energy Research and Development in Spain will develop and perform safety and performance cell testing.
The project kicked off in July 2021 with an extensive feasibility study, which included an analysis of the market, competitors, value chain, IP protection strategy, business model, and financial projections. Since the completion of the study in November 2021, the second phase of the project is now well underway. To date, this has included the design of the pilot production line and procurement of the required large-scale equipment. The design of the recycling system has also been completed and the required equipment is under order. In parallel to this work, CIDAUT has extensively developed test protocols for the safety and performance testing of Fennac-based cells and shall soon begin component testing.
We look forward to sharing more updates on the upscaling of Fennac production, as well as news on the cell tests as the project develops.
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