Leire Zubizarreta

The growing demand for lithium-ion batteries, driven by the electrification of transportation and the expansion of renewable energy systems, is accelerating the deployment of large-scale manufacturing facilities worldwide. This rapid industrial growth increases the need to ensure high product quality and process reliability, given the complexity and strong interdependence of battery manufacturing stages. In this context, traceability becomes a key requirement for monitoring production processes, detecting deviations, and ensuring consistent performance. Digital twins, defined as virtual representations of physical systems integrating data, models, and simulation tools, are emerging as a promising approach to address these challenges. By enabling enhanced process visibility, predictive capabilities, and decision support, digital twins can contribute to improved control and optimization of battery manufacturing processes. This paper presents a review of current developments in digital twin applications for lithium-ion battery cell production and highlights the potential benefits that these tools can offer to the battery industry, particularly in supporting traceability, process optimization, and quality assurance in next-generation gigafactories. The outcomes of this review provide actionable insights for both academia and industry by identifying research gaps, technological limitations, and opportunities to advance the development and industrial adoption of digital twins in battery cell manufacturing.

Materiale Plastice - a peer-reviewed scientific journal,specialised in the field of chemistry, polymers, elastomers and plastics research

Sustainable activated carbon can be obtained from the pyrolysis/activation of biomass wastes coming from different origins. Carbon obtained in this way shows interesting properties, such as high surface area, electrical conductivity, thermal and chemical stability, and porosity. These characteristics among others, such as a tailored pore size distribution and the possibility of functionalization, lead to an increased use of activated carbons in catalysis. The use of activated carbons from biomass origins is a step forward in the development of more sustainable processes enhancing material recycling and reuse in the frame of a circular economy. In this article, a perspective of different heterogeneous catalysts based on sustainable activated carbon from biomass origins will be analyzed focusing on their properties and catalytic performance for determined energy-related applications. In this way, the article aims to give the reader a scope of the potential of these tailor-made sustainable materials as a support in heterogeneous catalysis and future developments needed to improve catalyst performance. The selected applications are those related with H₂ energy and the production of biomethane for energy through CO₂ methanation.

Background: Phosphorus-containing high performance polymers have aroused wide interest, mainly due to good mechanical properties and their excellent fire resistance. The flexibility of synthetic polyphosphoesters allows the development of polymers in order to obtain solid polymer electrolytes for rechargeable lithium batteries based on solid films with superior fire resistance. Results: Novel linear Phosphonate-PEG polymers were synthesized by solution polycondensation of 4-chlorophenyldichlorophosphonate as a linking agent and poly(ethylene glycol)s with different molecular weights in the presence of triethylamine or 1-methylimidazole as acid scavenger. The yields were between 54% and 88% and inherent viscosity between 0.18-0.48 dl/g. Molar masses, Mn were about 26300 g/mol for polyphosphonates with PEG 2000 and 4600 g/mol for polyphosphonates with PEG 200. The LOI values for these polymers and membranes are in the range of 26–29. The membranes based on polyphosphonate with PEG 200 and 2000 showed conductivity between 6 × 10^-8 S.cm^-1 and 6 × 10^-7 S.cm^-1 at room temperature and total ionic transference number between 0.87- 0.96. The evolution of conductivity vs. temperature is linear. Conclusions: 1-methylimidazole was found to be better HCl scavenger than triethylamine, and allowed higher yields and more eco-friendly synthesis of the Phosphonate-PEG polymers for SPE. These polymers and membranes based on these polymers showed good LOI values and indicate an improvement of the safety of lithium batteries. The membranes present conductivities around 6 × 10^-7 S.cm^-1at room temperature and total ionic transference number is higher for membranes based on polymers with high EG unit content. Best results yield 88%, inherent viscosities 0.48 dl/g and Mn 26000 were obtained with 1-methylimidazole and PEG 2000. These membranes based on these polymers showed good LOI values (in the range 26-29%) and indicate an improvement of the safety of lithium batteries.