Commercial production has commenced at the Imperium3 New York (iM3NY) lithium-ion battery manufacturing plant in Endicott, New York. Magnis Energy Technologies Ltd, along with its joint venture and technology partner Charge CCCV LLC (C4V), are the major shareholders in iM3NY – North America’s only pure home-grown battery plant.
iM3NY CEO Chaitanya Sharma said, “Despite a challenging global environment and supply chain issues, we have successfully started production close to schedule which is a major achievement. We now look forward to increasing production rates toward and over the gigawatt hour mark.”
iM3NY Chairman and C4V President Dr Shailesh Upreti said six years ago, C4V and Magnis had the vision to produce American made lithium-ion batteries at a large scale using the BMLMP technology which possess many advantages in the current marketplace.
“Today, that vision has become reality and we are working hard to scale up towards double digit gigawatt scale production to continue to lead our position in the US market.”
With commercial production commencing at the iM3NY lithium-ion battery plant (the 22,000 square metre plant which exceeds three professional football/soccer fields), it is expected that several thousand cells will be produced in the first month with the main purpose of these cells having quality assurance.
As soon as the cells pass the quality assurance stage, annual manufacturing levels are expected to increase to 1GWh by the end of 2023 and will continue to ramp up to 1.8GWh and then double-digit gigawatts over the rest of this decade. At the plant capacity of 1.8GWh, 15,000 cells would be produced daily.
iM3NY lithium-ion cells have robust cell design, and a manufacturing process that ensures low cost, flexibility and long-term high repeatability.
The BMLMP chemistry and prismatic cell design is licensed and patented Charge CCCV technology. It contains lithium mixed-metal phosphate (LMP) with biomineralisation. The BMLMP technology enables one of the highest voltages of any lithium-ion cells in the marketplace at 3.9 volts. This is 20 per cent higher than lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells and 5 to 8 per cent higher than nickel cobalt aluminium (NCA) or nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) cells.
The biomineralisation also promotes long cycle life, fast charging, and ensures greater safety. The chemistry incorporates traditional electrolyte along with a patented mixed metal phosphate composition in the cathode that contributes to the overall safety and performance benefits. Notably there is no cobalt or nickel in this cell.
The prismatic cell is an advanced design with a newly engineered seal, lid, and contact configuration that yields high mechanical integrity and ease of assembly within many different pack configurations. The design also ensures volumetric efficiency for optimised capacity, cell performance and ease of design-in for a wide variety of devices. The prismatic design provides internal mechanical partitioning as an added safety feature over traditional pouch design configuration.
Along with carefully selected supply chain partners and using hydroelectricity for its manufacturing, batteries produced at the iM3NY battery plant will be among the greenest in the marketplace as was independently verified by Abt Associates.
With the current strong demand globally and with the huge demand on the horizon, the iM3NY team are planning to increase the annual capacity to 38GWh by 2030.
With the significant investment required to meet the planned increase in capacity, ongoing advanced talks continue with a number of groups including potential government funding.