September 15, 2026 | 11 AM ET
Every battery factory generates dust. Powder from mixing, flakes from coating, metal shavings from cutting, fibres from packaging and people. Most of it is far too small to see. And a particle you cannot see is a defect you cannot find, until a customer finds it for you.
This session explains, in plain terms, how a microscopic particle becomes a scrapped cell, a warranty claim, or a fire. We will walk the production line step by step and show where contamination is created, how it travels, and what it does once it is sealed inside a cell.
We will then look at what has changed in 2026. The shift toward dry, solvent-free electrode processing is removing the one step that is used to contain dust naturally, new fire and worker safety rules in the US and EU have turned contamination control from good practice into a documented obligation, and a fresh wave of vehicle recalls has traced fires back to the same root cause: a manufacturing defect that passed every quality check.
Finally, the practical part. What can actually be measured, what most plants measure instead, and how to choose and place the right cleaning and extraction equipment at each step of the line, based on gigafactory deployments across Europe, North America, and Asia.
Useful for anyone in electrode, cell or module production: process, quality, safety, engineering, and operations.
A tiny defect rate turns into a big scrap number. One bad electrode sheet in ten thousand can end up scrapping a quarter of your finished packs. Catching particles where they are made is the only fix that acts before that multiplies.
Most plants measure the air in the room and call it clean. Cells fail because of what settles on the electrode. If your specification only names a cleanroom class, half the problem is going unmeasured.
Dry electrode processing removes the wet step that used to trap dust, and new fire and worker safety rules have arrived with no grandfathering. Build extraction into the line now, because adding it to a running factory costs far more.
Whether you’re a company shaping the future of batteries or a professional looking to connect with the industry, Volta Foundation gives you access to a global network, events, insights, and opportunities.