Fortune Magazine’s Jeffrey Ball was a child at heart when he visited Shandong Yuhuang New Energy’s battery factory in Shandong Province. Perhaps he had a slice of swiss roll with his tea before setting out. However his main purpose was to discover how they made lithium batteries. To his surprise, they were using a method that reminded him of jelly roll technology.
A Brief History of Jelly Roll Technology in America
The Utica NY Northern Farmer Journal of December 1852 contains the first reference to America’s favourite childhood cake. “Bake quick,” a surviving copy says “and while hot spread with jelly. Roll carefully, and wrap it in a cloth. When cold cut in slices for the table.”
Lithium batteries are made on similar lines to jelly roll technology, although the ingredients are different. There are four main parts rolled up in a cylinder. First, there are the cathode and the anode containing potential for the spark of life. Then there are the electrolyte – still usually liquid – and the separator that acts as gate keeper. Finally, there’s a container for a ‘swiss roll’ of these ingredients which is what we pop into our devices.
Slicing the Lithium Battery Roll for Consumer Consumption
Jeffrey Ball watched while technicians at the Shandong Yuhuang New Energy Factory in Heze City extruded cathode and anode material onto long, flat sheets. Then they flattened these with rollers and baked them in long ovens, just like grand-mamma did when she was making layered cakes.
Next, they made a sandwich of these sheets with a ‘jelly-like’ electrolyte between them. Finally they offered their swiss roll up to a “massive machine whirring with wheels and belts” that rolled it into a tight, three-layer spiral. Another machine sliced the battery ‘cake’ into precise lengths and fed them into the containers that fit precisely into our devices.
Some things never change. At the end of a process we may often return to where we started. Gaston Planté used the same jelly roll technology for the world’s first rechargeable battery in 1859.
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