Case Study / Cathode · Korea
OEB-5 Contained NCM Precursor Line — 6,000 kg/h, Zero Exposure Incidents
Toxic precursor unpacking to sealed sagger filling under a −40 °C dew-point envelope, delivered turnkey to a leading Korean cathode producer.
Project Background
The Plant, the Material, the Target
The client produces high-nickel NCM precursor and finished cathode powder for domestic cell makers. A capacity expansion meant a second precursor handling line, and their existing multi-vendor line — assembled from European, Japanese and local equipment — had taught them exactly what they did not want: three suppliers on site during commissioning, each responsible for a third of the problems.
For the new line they wanted one partner, one contract, and containment numbers written into the acceptance criteria.
- OEB-5 containment target based on precursor OEL
- Moisture pickup below 200 ppm across transfer
- Full lot traceability from receipt to sagger
- Performance sign-off on the client's floor, not at the factory gate
The Challenge
What Was Breaking Before We Arrived
Operator exposure at bag opening
Precursor bags were opened in a semi-open hood; area monitoring had twice exceeded the internal action limit in the previous year.
Moisture drift in transfer
The existing dilute-phase loop ran on dried compressed air that spiked to −20 °C dew point in summer, forcing batch rejections.
Fragmented batch records
Three control systems meant three record formats — the QA team rebuilt genealogy manually for every audit.
The Solution
What We Engineered and Why
Bulk Pro engineered the line as one sealed, dry, negative-pressure system. Bags enter glove-box unpacking stations operating under OEB-5 with bag-in/bag-out liners; transfer runs on a nitrogen loop with dew point held at −40 °C and alarmed interlocks; dosing uses loss-in-weight feeders at ±0.1%; and saggers are filled in a degassing station before moisture-barrier sealing.
The entire line reports to a single DCS/MES layer developed in-house — one batch record format, one alarm philosophy, one interface for the operators.
- Glove-box stations with secondary HEPA filtration
- N₂ closed-loop conveying, O₂ monitored
- Anti-bridging discharge on every Li-salt hopper
- Battery-Passport-ready MES genealogy
The Results
Measured Before → After Commissioning
Client Voice
What the Client Said at Sign-Off
We had three suppliers on the last line and one number to call on this one. That difference showed up in the commissioning schedule — and again at our cell-customer audit, which the batch records passed on the first submission.
Process Engineering Director · Leading Korean cathode producer
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