Interview With Our expert Benjamin Troskie from COTES A/S

by | Oct 28, 2022 | Q&A | 0 comments

What are dehumidifiers in the first place?

A dehumidifier essentially removes moisture from the air and helps you better manage the level of humidity in an enclosed space. There are different types of dehumidifiers, but at Cotes we make adsorption dehumidifiers for industrial application that can handle a range of airflows and temperature in an energy-efficient way.

 

Why is there a need for dehumidifiers in Li-ion battery manufacturing?

When you produce modern batteries there is a lot of delicate chemistry involved that reacts adversely to the presence of humidity. These hypersensitive processes require a very low dewpoint to ensure the quality and safety of the batteries which is why you need a dehumidifier.

 

What are the challenges faced by the battery industry while selection of dehumidifiers and what are they looking for in process parameters?

Battery manufacturers are hard pressed to keep reducing energy costs and cut the embedded carbon footprint of batteries cell packs without sacrificing safety or product quality. Battery dry rooms use a lot of energy. Up to 43% of total energy consumption in the battery manufacturing process is for keeping the dry rooms super dry—that’s a relative humidity of under 1% and dew points ranging from -40°C to -120°C. The challenge of maintaining ultralow dewpoints and reducing net energy usage is that non-Cotes adsorption dehumidifiers use a lot of energy (gas and electricity) to keep the battery dry rooms dry and are not energy efficient.

 

What makes Cotes the world’s most sustainable and cost-effective dehumidifier

What makes the patented Cotes Exergic Technology different is that it runs at much lower optimal regeneration temperatures than non-Cotes systems. Running at low temperatures means you don’t need to burn gas to reach high temperature or use a lot of electricity, in fact, all you need is a hot water supply of 80-90°C that allows the system to utilize more sustainable energy sources (solar thermal, waste heat, district heating or an energy efficient heat pump if you are willing to replace the chiller with a heat pump).

 

Would you like to share some experience and case study with your customers and how they get benefit by using your solutions.

Yes, always happy to share our learnings. We see jaw dropping results from recent installations at some of the biggest gigafactories in Europe and leading research fabs are confirming the data. In a specific case, the Cotes Ultradry dehumidifiers saved 85% of the battery dry room energy usage compared to our closest competitor. That is equal to 49% net energy savings for the whole battery manufacturing plant, and represents a *7,8% reduction of the total embedded CO2 footprint of batteries produced at this specific Fab.
*Currently, 19% of the energy demands for a lithium battery pack stem from battery cell production (page 18 at ivl.se).

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