Henkel unveils Battery Engineering Center in its Inspiration Center Duesseldorf

The Battery Engineering Center features two high-tech facilities – a Battery Application Center which opened in August this year, and a Battery Test Center which will start operating in 2024. The state-of-the-art laboratories have been designed to foster collaborative development of next-generation electric vehicle (EV) battery solutions. Accommodating a team of dedicated EV battery experts, known as Henkel’s esteemed ‘Fuel the Future’ team, the Center focuses on pivotal innovation areas such as safety, sustainability, thermal management, integrated battery design, and battery cell technology.

”The Battery Engineering Center, housed inside Henkel’s €130m Inspiration Center, represents Henkel’s unwavering commitment to spearheading innovation and technological advancement in the E-Mobility sector,” says George Kazantzis, Global Head of Henkel’s Automotive Components business unit. ”This cutting-edge facility enables our ‘Fuel the Future’ team to accelerate innovation by seamlessly integrating material application, full-scale battery system testing, simulation, and product development – all in-house. This enables us to significantly reduce development and launch time,” adds Dr. Olaf Lammerschop, Henkel’s Global Technology Lead for E-Mobility.

Equipped with the latest facilities and technologies for battery assembly, disassembly, material application and advanced modeling and simulation, the Battery Engineering Center boasts advanced battery testing capabilities. These capabilities facilitate exhaustive examination of a battery pack’s performance through temperature cycling and charge and discharge processes.

Crucially, the data generated is seamlessly integrated with the simulation team, ensuring a harmonious integration of real-world testing and digital modeling. This powerful synergy offers unparalleled flexibility and savings for our customers and optimises and accelerates the design and material selection process.

”Thanks to our investment in the Battery Engineering Center, we can create a digital twin of any battery and simulate the performance of our solutions under various conditions,” explains Kazantzis. ”We validate these simulations and our models through real-life stress tests, ensuring both the reliability of our data and the efficacy of our solutions.”

Designed to handle all types of full-scale battery systems, at full pack level and confidential prototypes, the Battery Engineering Center is TISAX certified, the automotive industry’s global standard on information security assessments. In addition, Henkel has partnered with AVL, one of the world’s leading mobility technology companies for development, simulation and testing in the automotive industry, and in other sectors, to equip the Battery Test Center with the latest tools, equipment, and technology for full-scale battery system testing, including a climatic chamber, following the automotive industry standards.

By collaborating with Atlas Copco on their powerful high-end precision and smart dosing equipment, the company has further enhanced the capabilities of the Battery Engineering Center. This enables customers to implement reliable, fast, and sustainable processes for battery assembly, running and testing all existing and innovative materials from small development scale up to series speed.

As the pioneering facility of its kind, the Battery Engineering Center in Duesseldorf represents just the beginning. Henkel plans to establish a global network of Battery Engineering Centers with upcoming locations in the United States and China. This interconnected network that will run on shared digital platforms will foster seamless cross-regional collaboration among global teams, with OEMs and battery manufactures.