CHENNAI: The Central Electro Chemical Research Institute (CECRI) is building an indigenously-developed lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Chennai with the capacity of producing 1,000 batteries a day.
The facility is expected to be ready by 2024 at the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Madras Complex at Taramani in Chennai.
The lifetime of batteries manufactured here would be 5 to 10 times longer than currently used Li-Ion batteries and smaller in size, Dr KJ Sreeram, Director of Central Leather Research Institute (CLRI) and CECRI (additional charge) told this newspaper. Both of these come under CSIR.CECRI aims to rope in private players at the facility to train the industry with the technology and offer plug-and-play service.
“Basically, the technology being new, we want to demonstrate it on large scale to the industry, so that they don’t have any difficulties in adopting the technology,” he said.
These batteries at the new facility would be focused mostly on consumer electronic applications and would reduce import dependence from countries like China and South Korea, which are the leading players in the industry.
The facility is engaged to develop a technology to recycle and reuse batteries. Dr KJ Sreeram said CSIR researchers are looking after the extraction of rare earth minerals used in the Li-ion batteries.
“As we have more manufacturing capacity, we will be able to source materials in India. Most of our beaches in the down south have Monazite sand, which is a good source of rare earth minerals,” he said. CERCI is also involved in the development of renewable energy storage cells.
Currently, CERCI has a public-private partnership with the revenue sharing model at its Li-ion battery fabrication facility, established as CSIR Innovation Centre for Next Generation Energy Storage Solutions (ICeNGESS) and has a capacity to produce 100 batteries a day.
“We provide infrastructure, the companies would take of raw materials, manpower and all other aspects, he said, adding, once they start manufacturing, they will share a percentage of sale value with us. CERCI is yet to finalize the numbers,” Sreeram added.