January 23, 2026 • 4 min read
Battery materials: Engineering the future of anode materials
Why the future of energy storage needs precision – and partners with the experience to deliver it.
The battery anode market is set for strong growth over the next decade as electric vehicle (EV) and energy stationary storage (ESS) production accelerates, with ESS battery demand alone growing by around 40 percent year on year.
Graphite for lithium-ion batteries and hard carbon for sodium-ion batteries remain the core materials, with technology advances continuing to improve cost, range, and reliability. With more than 95 percent of anode processing concentrated in China, industry and investors are now moving capital toward new capacity to secure supply and reduce risk.
Producing these materials at scale, however, is complex. It takes engineering solutions that can navigate technology selection, scale-up challenges and reduce delivery risks.
Battery-grade anode materials are performance materials. Meeting their manufacturing specifications is essential to battery performance.
“Producing battery-grade anode materials is fundamentally different from traditional chemical manufacturing,” says Mervyn Stevens, Vice President, Battery Materials Process and Technology. “These are performance materials. Manufacturing happens in a precision environment, with rigorous control over particle size, crystallinity, purity and surface treatments.”
Meeting these specifications is essential to battery performance. That’s why advanced engineering, robust quality assurance and extensive process expertise matter.
Why experience matters
Delivering battery-grade anode materials at scale requires integrated engineering across the entire project lifecycle.
From feasibility studies to full-scale execution, experienced partners bring insight and clarity into the technical, operational and commercial realities of building battery-grade graphite facilities.
“Successful projects integrate multidisciplinary teams across process, mechanical, electrical, civil, structural and geotechnical engineering at every stage of the project lifecycle,” says Stevens. “This allows for process characteristics, product specifications, and cost and schedule deliverability to be considered together, enabling solutions to be tailored to the unique needs of anode material facilities.”
Technology-agnostic solutions
No two projects are the same. Each comes with its own combination of feedstocks, product specifications, commercial drivers and operational constraints. The specific solutions needed for these facilities must be evaluated and selected across a range of graphitization and carbonization technologies, with a clear understanding of their impact on the overall project.
“Whether the project involves natural graphite, needle coke, calcined coke, bio-char, lignin, or mesophase pitch, expert evaluation of trade-offs across energy consumption, throughput, emissions and product quality is critical,” says Stevens. “For example, developing hard carbon materials for sodium-ion batteries needs facilities designed to manage intensive carbonization and calcination processes with specific thermal and structural demands.”
Purification steps also need to be tailored to each feedstock to meet battery-grade specifications.
Ensuring safety and quality at every step
Safety and quality must be designed into anode material facilities from the outset.
Anode material production facilities bring unique safety risks, particularly related to explosion hazards from fine particulate handling and high temperatures.
“Compliance with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Atmospheres Explosives (ATEX) standards, dust hazard analysis, containment systems, inert environments and fire suppression strategies is non-negotiable,” says Justin McDaniel, Mechanical Department Manager, Baton Rouge. “Designing safety inherently into the system helps prevent incidents, supports permitting and improves plant operating performance.”
That same level of rigor also extends to quality systems. Battery manufacturers demand tight and consistent specification windows. Meeting them depends on robust quality assurance and quality control systems like online and batch sampling, Raman spectroscopy, loss on ignition (LOI) and contract-linked quality protocols.
“To thrive, facilities must have high uptime and produce high-quality materials at a competitive cost while meeting customer and regulatory standards,” explains McDaniel. “To achieve this, close collaboration between engineering, research and operations is imperative to embed quality control throughout the process.”
Anode material facility overview
Essential features at a glance (*)
Capacity & delivery
Energy & environment
Safety & quality
Capital (indicative)
Supporting the next wave of investment
Next-generation anode materials are supporting the growing demand for electric vehicles, grid storage and portable electronics. These projects are complex and capital intensive, making the right choice of delivery partner a critical decision.
“Miners, refiners, technology providers, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and investors benefit from engaging with partners who understand the engineering, technology and delivery requirements of these facilities,” says Stevens. “That experience helps de-risk decisions, support informed technology selection and embed safety and quality from the start.”
Why Worley
With more than a dozen anode materials projects completed, we bring advanced materials engineering capability, extensive understanding of the battery value chain and hands-on expertise in scaling first-of-a-kind technologies.
“Our work spans pilot plants to giga-scale developments across several feedstocks and technologies,” says Stevens. “We integrate cutting-edge technologies and robust project management to deliver on time and within budget.
“As a partner, we work alongside customers with multidisciplinary teams focused on quality, innovation, and predictable outcomes, supporting long-term performance in a fast-evolving energy storage market.”
With more than a dozen anode materials projects completed, we help customers derisk technology choices, capital investment and long-term performance.
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