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BASF Catalysts President Frank Bozich, left, and company Chairman and Chief Executive for North America Hans-Ulrich Engel stand in front of the company's new Elyria battery materials plant. Built on the site of the 120-year-old Harshaw Chemical Co. plant, the new battery facility should make materials for electric cars. Lonnie Timmons III/The Plain Dealer
ELYRIA, Ohio -- Hoping to make materials that could put large numbers of drivers in electric cars within the next few years, German chemicals giant BASF opened a new Northeast Ohio plant Tuesday.
Built in Elyria on the site of Harshaw Chemical Co.'s original 1892 facility on Pine Street, the plant will make nickel-metal-cobalt cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles and hybrids. Company officials said the plant could make those cars economically viable within a few years.
"This area now has an opportunity to lead the world in specialty materials for advanced energy," Frank Bozich, president BASF's catalysts division, said at the plant's opening.
The material is a massive change from when William Harshaw built a factory to make pigments and other chemical colors. Then, the best way around Northeast Ohio was on horseback.
BASF engineers said the dramatic improvements they're expecting from their cathode materials should make electric car batteries more powerful, longer lasting and much cheaper. Over the next few months, the plant should create only a few dozen jobs, but that figure could grow in the coming years.
The new BASF materials plant was built with nearly $25 million in federal stimulus grants. The federally funded Argonne National Labratory near Chicago developed the process that BASF plans to commercialize in Elyria.
Bozich said the company chose Elyria because its employees there were already familiar with the basic process of making the specialty materials it needs.
"In making cathode materials, you do many of the same processes you do in making catalysts" such as the ones Elyria now makes for oil refineries, Bozich said.
Dave Howell, hybrid electrics team leader for the U.S. Department of Energy who was at the opening, called the new plant "the forefront of the U.S. electric battery industry."
Howell said if the Elyria plant is able to produce high volumes of low-cost cathode materials, the cost of electric cars could drop sharply, making the often pricey vehicles more attractive to buyers. General Motors' Chevrolet Volt, for example, costs about $40,000 before federal tax credits.
Jeffrey Chamberlin, head of battery research at the Argonne lab, said BASF should be able to eliminate one of the two chemicals now being used in large lithium batteries. Making cathodes entirely out of nickel-manganese-cobalt, instead of a blend of that material and another manganese combination, should allow for batteries that hold more power and are much more durable.
Today, automakers have to over-engineer their batteries to ensure they won't die after two or three years as cell-phone batteries are prone to do. In the Volt, for example, the car uses only about 60 percent of its 300-pound battery. Avoiding overcharging and fully draining the battery allows the company to guarantee a 10-year lifespan.
Chamberlin said using the BASF cathodes, companies will not only get more power per pound of battery, they'll be able to use almost all of the battery.
"GM and Ford have told us that getting more power density and using more of the battery could triple or quadruple their cost reductions," Chamberlin said.
Though Argonne developed the theory to make the material, BASF has spent years developing a commercial process. That started in Germany where engineers made small quantities of the cathode material.
