Friday, July 20, 2012

No. 567: A high performance electrolyte for lithium-ion battery from Daikin (July 20, 2012)

Technology:
Daikin, Japan’s leading industrial air-conditioner maker, developed a high performance electrolyte that doubles the capacity of a lithium-ion battery, and will start to mass produce it in its plant in Alabama in the U.S. shortly. The company originally produces the raw materials for electrolyte, but it successfully increased the performance of an electrolyte by improving the composition of the raw materials. Using a fluorine series solution as the raw material, the new electrolyte allows for charging at a higher voltage than the standard electrolyte. Besides increasing the battery capacity, it can lengthen the life of a lithium-ion battery because it does not deteriorate easily. The company wishes to get sales of 15 billion yen from this new electrolyte in 2015.

The mass production plant in the U.S. will be ready to operate in August with an annual production capacity of 2,000 tons. Daikin plans to build a plant for mass production both in China and Japan to increase the total annual production capacity to 10,000 tons. The new electrolyte will be put on the U.S. in January 2013. Daikin reckons the market of electrolyte for lithium-ion battery will grow from current 30,000 tons to 50,000-100,000 tons in 2015, and plans to get 10% share in the world market in 2015. The company is the world second largest maker of fluorine-related chemical products following DuPont of the U.S.     

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