Work

Environmental benefits and trade-offs of dry coating for battery electrode production

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Dry coating is an emerging, scalable alternative to traditional slurry coating for manufacturing lithium-ion battery electrodes. It offers significant energy savings, eliminates the need for toxic solvents, and is consequently often regarded as an environmentally more benign process. Dry coating exploits the fibrillating properties of polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), substituting the polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) binder employed in slurry coating. As replacing slurry coating with dry coating involves different production processes and materials, a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) study was performed for an accurate comparison of the environmental impacts. The results of our LCA show that dry coating has the potential to reduce environmental impacts across all assessed impact categories except for the ozone depletion potential, which increases by a factor of 1.8 when PVDF is replaced by an equal mass of PTFE. For LiNi 0.8 Mn 0.1 Co 0.1 O₂ (NMC811) cathodes, dry coating typically enables a reduction in binder content by a factor of two, which offsets the higher ozone depletion potential of PTFE with respect to PVDF and results in a comparable impact at cell level. For LiFePO 4 (LFP) cathodes and graphite anodes, state-of-the-art processing relies on aqueous, non-fluorinated binders, typically a combination of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR). Dry coating therefore introduces PTFE into a process that is currently free of fluorinated materials, lowering CO 2 emissions but increasing ozone depleting emissions. We also highlight knowledge and data gaps associated with the polymerization of PVDF and PTFE, which currently prevent a robust comparison of toxicity-related impact categories, and discuss the potential of non-fluorinated binders for dry coating. Overall, our study provides a foundation for understanding environmental benefits, trade-offs, and remaining data gaps identified for dry coating technologies, supporting informed decisions on their future development and scalable implementation in lithium-ion battery manufacturing.

Source: ChemRxiv

DOI: 10.26434/chemrxiv.15008600/v1