Portable power: batteries of the future
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CORDIScovery podcast- Episode #30 - Batteries
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:16:02
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:04 - 00:00:40:12
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. If we are to meet our decarbonization targets, we need to reshape the production, storage and distribution of electricity. Off road equipment used in construction and other sectors is still very heavily reliant on diesel. The cost of downtime to recharge current electric batteries puts off industrial consumers, as does the short life of the batteries, which then need to be replaced.
00:00:40:14 - 00:01:02:21
Abigail Acton
In many ways, battery technology hasn't developed to keep pace with our growing need for portable power storage devices that can balance out the intermittent power produced by renewable sources and our energy demand would be ideal. Identify viable novel materials to make a new generation of batteries getting past bottlenecks and lithium supply set to get even worse as the demand for electric vehicles takes off.
00:01:02:23 - 00:01:28:01
Abigail Acton
Newly designed cooling systems to speed up recharging time and prolong the lives of batteries and harnessing the power of silicon. Today's episode is looking at breakthroughs in battery design that could affect all of us supported by EU research funding. Our guests are here to recharge our interest in the often overlooked component of our lives. Batteries. Juan J. Vilatela leads a research group at IMDEA Materials in Madrid.
00:01:28:03 - 00:01:38:18
Abigail Acton
His scientific career is focused on methods for synthesis, an assembly of 1D nanomaterials into microplastic, nano textiles for energy and structural applications. Welcome one.
00:01:38:20 - 00:01:40:09
Juan J. Vilatela
Hi there. Thank you.
00:01:40:11 - 00:01:56:07
Abigail Acton
There Pekka Peljo is Associate Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Turku, Finland. He's interested in accelerating the development of the stationary electricity storage technologies for storing wind and solar power, but also in fundamental electrochemistry. Welcome, Pekka.
00:01:56:09 - 00:01:58:00
Pekka Peljo
Thank you. Nice to be here.
00:01:58:02 - 00:02:19:04
Abigail Acton
Good to have you. Matthieu Desbois is president and one of the co-founders of WATTALPS. He has dedicated his career to optimizing energy consumption and emissions in mobile applications, firstly focusing on hybrid cars and then to all kind of vehicles and machines. His interests lie in electrification, batteries and their optimization. Welcome, Matthieu.
00:02:19:06 - 00:02:22:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Hello. Nice to be here. And share the batteries.
00:02:22:11 - 00:02:43:23
Abigail Acton
Yes, let's talk batteries. Let's talk batteries. First of all, with one now one. Silicon has great potential for use in next generation batteries. And the synergy project you coordinated tackled the challenges of producing nanostructure silicon. That creates a simple, scalable process to result in thick electrodes that are economically feasible. So tell us what is intriguing the synergy team now.
00:02:44:02 - 00:02:44:18
Abigail Acton
Yes.
00:02:44:20 - 00:03:03:03
Juan J. Vilatela
What we're trying to do and what's intriguing us is how to introduce silicon in lithium ion batteries. In lithium ion batteries, you know, the kind that we carry around because you carry them, they have a different structure and they need to be light. But also they're a bit like if you look at them on the inside, they're a bit like a sandwich.
00:03:03:03 - 00:03:26:19
Juan J. Vilatela
So they have multiple layers. And one of those layers is a key ingredient is the negative electrode where the charge is stored. And this is called the anode, this negative electrode. Today we use graphite and silicon is very important because silicon could store ten times more charge than graphite. Well, and that's why silicon is considered a key ingredient for the next generation.
00:03:26:19 - 00:03:28:20
Juan J. Vilatela
Lithium ion batteries, the third generation.
00:03:28:23 - 00:03:36:13
Abigail Acton
Well, it sounds obviously ideal. I mean, everyone likes the idea of their devices running that much longer. So what's holding back the use of silicon while using silicon already?
00:03:36:18 - 00:04:00:11
Juan J. Vilatela
Yeah, in graphite and other materials, the charge is stored in little holes in the material in the crystal. To simplify in silicon, they do mix together and swell, so that can often degraded a little bit over time. So it means that the challenge is to. Well, one of the challenges is to make sure that it is preserved, that it doesn't degrade.
00:04:00:13 - 00:04:11:15
Juan J. Vilatela
And the most effective way of doing that is probably to make it very, very small, so small that it's smaller than a crack that or a defect. That means making it nano sized so super small.
00:04:11:20 - 00:04:17:14
Abigail Acton
So, in fact, making it so small that in fact the degradation can't happen. Yeah, right. Okay. This is fascinating.
00:04:17:18 - 00:04:43:13
Juan J. Vilatela
That's a general idea. So on the one hand, you want to make it very small so it doesn't degrade, but to make it useful, at least for, for instance, electric vehicles, we need to make about 10,000 tonnes of these per year. So there's this conflicting. Yeah. Scales and that is, that's has that is probably, I think, the biggest challenge to be able to produce it on a large scale with this level of refinement.
00:04:43:18 - 00:04:49:23
Abigail Acton
And at this particular nano size. Yeah. So how did Synergy manage to rise to the challenge of producing nano silicon?
00:04:50:01 - 00:05:12:24
Juan J. Vilatela
We developed a process from scratch altogether where we transform a gas that has silicon into a nano textile. So let me try to go through the steps, this process. So imagine a pipe, a tube. Right. Which is the reactor. And this can be the pipe, like a big pipe you would see in a pool, for instance. Right. So we insert gas in it.
00:05:12:24 - 00:05:36:22
Juan J. Vilatela
So there's gas flowing through it. And we also produce a mist, like a cloud of very tiny particles, catalyst particles that act like seeds. And if we supply a little bit of heat as all of these flows through this pipe, what happens is that the silicon gas transforms into nanowires so very, very long wires that because they're flowing through this pipe, they all entangle a bit like cooked spaghetti.
00:05:37:02 - 00:05:54:21
Juan J. Vilatela
And that's important because it means that at the outlet of this pipe, what you have is a solid material, like a textile, almost like office paper. And it means that we have almost a finished electrode already. So this is important, for instance, because you don't make a powder that you need to then mix with solvents and so on.
00:05:54:21 - 00:06:13:02
Juan J. Vilatela
So in one step you convert a gas or precursor into a fully finished electric and it's nano sized. But what's very important, and I guess perhaps unique about this method of doing it is that by doing it as everything runs through this pipe, you can do it super fast so we can convert the gas into a solid in a couple of seconds.
00:06:13:03 - 00:06:13:18
Abigail Acton
Wow.
00:06:13:19 - 00:06:33:10
Juan J. Vilatela
I mean, this is what was a bit of a surprise. And that suggests to us that we can, therefore that this will be cost effective as this is scaled up because we need to make a large amount, but also that we will be able to produce it very fast to scale up exponentially because this is really urgent. If you wanted to introduce it in batteries.
00:06:33:12 - 00:06:41:01
Abigail Acton
You said yourself that it's so it almost took the team by surprise how quickly it happened. That must have been a hell of a moment when you realized. Can you remember that?
00:06:41:01 - 00:07:01:23
Juan J. Vilatela
Yes, because, I mean, we were chasing these results, but there was some uncertainty as to whether this could happen or not. And then when the student came and showed it to me, it was just one of those days you will never forget, especially because, I mean, this is going back five years. And I could just I just knew that we would be, you know, five years down the line, we would be scaling up and this is what we're doing now.
00:07:01:23 - 00:07:09:19
Juan J. Vilatela
So we my student and I found that a company floated and for two years it's been industrializing the process and I'm still optimistic.
00:07:09:21 - 00:07:18:15
Abigail Acton
Yeah, I'm not surprised. You have every right to be optimistic indeed. Adam, can you tell me what industries would benefit from from this product, from this nano silicon?
00:07:18:21 - 00:07:50:01
Juan J. Vilatela
I mean, everywhere where there is a battery that moves to simplify. So of course, one huge area of impact would be electric vehicles, because, you know, if we combine these improvements in their lecturer in the negative electrode with other improvements in the positive electrode that other people are looking at and so on. And and I guess what other people are doing in terms of the park and so on, I think we can probably double the range of an electric vehicle and that could really be a trigger point or a tipping point for people to adopt, to adopt more electric vehicles.
00:07:50:03 - 00:08:06:11
Juan J. Vilatela
And that would have a huge impact on reducing emissions of mobility. So that is a big area of improvement. And another one is, of course, things that fly like drones use in agriculture, in emergencies and so on. So everything that moves needs a battery and that today we cannot electrify easily.
00:08:06:11 - 00:08:24:20
Abigail Acton
Excellent. And then therefore also from as you say, a wider range which I can imagine actually drones being used in an emergency situation to know that they had the power to fly much longer would be wonderful. Excellent. So one, what caused you to find this interesting? You said that you had a student and you were looking at this.
00:08:24:20 - 00:08:26:15
Abigail Acton
Why did you get into this area of research?
00:08:26:16 - 00:08:47:01
Juan J. Vilatela
Actually, I've been working with nanomaterials for, well, ever since I started working as a scientist over 20 years. And I guess I've been through a lot of the I've seen the great expectations people have put on nanomaterials and, you know, they make the news and then they, you know, everyone forgets about them. And so, you know, those of us still in the field persevere.
00:08:47:03 - 00:09:23:16
Juan J. Vilatela
And there are some examples where nano materials are just hugely necessary. I mean, a regular battery already has nanomaterials in it. So everyone here today is carrying nanomaterial in their pocket, I think from what I hear in other electrodes. So they are making a difference and they will transform the way we move. Without a doubt. So that has been a huge motivation for me and in particular the fact that this application involves mobility means that we do have a chance now to to move the needle and reduce emissions substantially, because this goes to the core of one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions.
00:09:23:16 - 00:09:27:18
Juan J. Vilatela
So that is a dream come true to be able to work on a project like this one.
00:09:27:20 - 00:09:32:18
Abigail Acton
Excellent. No, indeed. Yeah, very good. Any any questions at all for one, guys. Yeah. Matthew.
00:09:32:20 - 00:10:00:14
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, a lot of questions. Well, first of all, congratulations on the job already done and yeah, it's impressive. I know everybody is working on silicon and you, you, you said it's really difficult to manage the swelling of the silicon and I didn't fully get it all. You do it. I understand the way you manufacture the electrode. What I don't understand is how you keep the structure, the mechanical structure of the electrode and how you make it.
00:10:00:14 - 00:10:08:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Also the electrical contact between all these very small particles. How do you make sure that you still can pull the electrons out of them?
00:10:08:04 - 00:10:27:24
Juan J. Vilatela
I'll try to give a brief answer because this is a very, very good question. They would give us enough to to grab a coffee together. But because the particles are very long and thin like wires, they entangle. So this entanglement gives a lot of cohesion to the material. It means that the swelling still swelling happens, but they do not disconnect.
00:10:27:24 - 00:10:54:15
Juan J. Vilatela
They do not break apart. If you have powder and like a agglomerated powder and it's just a disconnect. So that's one aspect of it, that these entangled networks, it's a network rather than, you know, like a sintered powder. And the electrical part is super interesting. We're actually looking at the fundamentals of that as we as we speak, but you can optionally put a bit of conductor.
00:10:54:15 - 00:11:16:24
Juan J. Vilatela
But the truth is you don't really need it because the electrical conductivity of silicon is enough because you don't have a lot of junctions in this network. Again, because they're very long and thin, you have very you need very few wires to bridge electrodes. So the key is that the geometry, by walking away from spherical particles to very long, thin particles, you get a lot of you benefit from the properties of the crystal itself.
00:11:17:01 - 00:11:23:05
Abigail Acton
Thank you. That was an excellent answer. I followed it completely. That was perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Did you have a question?
00:11:23:07 - 00:11:32:11
Pekka Peljo
Yeah. So actually. So now there's lots of interest on the solid-state electrolytes. So you are you nanowires actually compatible with? That's what.
00:11:32:13 - 00:12:01:20
Juan J. Vilatela
It is. And I am fascinated by that prospect because that could be the next big revolution in lithium ion batteries from from what experts like you tell me. And there are the fact that we have a mechanically very robust anode can actually be very beneficial because these electrolytes is solid electrolytes and they are assemble in radically different ways involving high pressure during fabrication and then during operation.
00:12:01:20 - 00:12:14:16
Juan J. Vilatela
So this mechanical integrity is critical and we have very good results in the lab from one of my students. So I'm very, very encouraged. But there's just so much to learn on electrolytes.
00:12:14:18 - 00:12:27:08
Abigail Acton
That's like there's so much to learn from, from all of all of it really massively complex portable power. And we use it without even thinking. I mean, you know, people like me, consumers use it without even thinking, Excellent. Any more questions at all? mature. You have a question?
00:12:27:08 - 00:12:40:05
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Just one little question on on where you are in terms of market, are you close to the market? Do you have already big companies testing your product? Where are you? Basically.
00:12:40:07 - 00:13:10:14
Juan J. Vilatela
We are building a pilot plant to manufacture continuous rolls that we can then that would directly be shipped to the manufacturers of cells for us, for pre-commercial trials. And we already have some of them make cells, specialty cells, and so the manufacture is going well. We I hope we can be making a small packs or enough material to produce packs towards the end of next year.
00:13:10:16 - 00:13:17:08
Abigail Acton
That's excellent. One that's really around the corner almost really great, excellent stuff. And you're optimistic.
00:13:17:10 - 00:13:19:22
Juan J. Vilatela
Always.
00:13:19:24 - 00:13:38:24
Abigail Acton
No alternative really, is there? Yeah, Very good. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn to take a back to the combat project focused on ways of identifying what new materials could be used in flow batteries using machine learning and high throughput screening. And you briefly explain how a flow battery works for those of us who've never given it much thought and what the drawbacks are, please.
00:13:39:05 - 00:14:07:03
Pekka Peljo
So in typical batteries, the energy is stored in the reactor, but in flow batteries you add to tanks and you store the energy in the liquid. So if you need more energy storage capacity, you can sustain bigger things. So this makes these systems quite nice for storing energy for a longer duration, like for 4 to 8 hours. But the most common is less technology technologies.
00:14:07:03 - 00:14:32:11
Pekka Peljo
They are relying on vanadium. But why do need this? These technologies for energy storage is that if you want to have this renewable energy based system, we need some mace to keep the lights on when there is no wind or solar. But B, those are. So at the moment the best option is actually just to pump water uphill and then finally through the turbine.
00:14:32:13 - 00:14:51:12
Pekka Peljo
But then this is not very practical in all locations. So that's why we have been looking at this for batteries. And then the challenge is that when the radium is not exactly the most abundant material, it's not too rare, but it's in the borderland. So we would like to replace that with some other options.
00:14:51:16 - 00:15:04:03
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay. And so can you tell me, how are alternative materials currently evaluated and what is combat doing differently? So there must be other groups of people research interested in finding alternative materials. How does your project combat differ?
00:15:04:08 - 00:15:31:14
Pekka Peljo
So this sort of traditional approach is very much focused on this, that somebody has an idea or intuition to try something, and then these materials have to be prepared and purified and characterized actually is the right material and then tested. And these days typically a lot of thing. So that's an example of this due to mind batteries development started in the seventies and then some but developed in the eighties and then first commercialization in the nineties, right?
00:15:31:14 - 00:15:36:12
Abigail Acton
Nearly 20 years then, Yes, to go from lithium might be a good idea to lithium ion batteries.
00:15:36:14 - 00:16:05:02
Pekka Peljo
Yes. Wow. So this is very sort of time consuming. Yeah. What we looked at in going about combat project was to try to develop tools to accelerate this development. So for new materials, we have quite strict requirements. We have to have the right to work. It's right. Solubility is high enough, stability and preferably also environmentally friendly. So sustainable materials and also at low cost.
00:16:05:04 - 00:16:08:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah I mean quite a lot of ask so yeah.
00:16:08:08 - 00:16:31:20
Pekka Peljo
Yes so this is the challenge. So we started to think how can we use these computational tools that have been developed for the last 10 to 20 years to try to help us to accelerate this development. So in this project, these screened accommodations to evaluate the rate of and so this is probably this is related to the cell block, basal cell wall, this of the building.
00:16:31:22 - 00:16:39:00
Abigail Acton
I'm going to second let me stop you for a second. See the redox potential. What is that? That the amount of power that the battery can hold or the amount of power that the battery will give out?
00:16:39:01 - 00:16:43:11
Pekka Peljo
No, this is the cell wall. This is the difference between the two, the rest of the cells.
00:16:43:11 - 00:16:44:00
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:16:44:01 - 00:16:53:18
Pekka Peljo
And then the reference this is also the symbol. This then is one of the parameters that defines how much energy you can store and how much power you can get, though.
00:16:53:20 - 00:16:54:03
Abigail Acton
Right.
00:16:54:04 - 00:16:56:05
Pekka Peljo
Is it Tokamak is.
00:16:56:07 - 00:17:02:00
Abigail Acton
Going to get it up? No, no, that's fine. They're not about that. You can put in and the amount of power you can get up, that's absolutely fine. And that's the redox potential.
00:17:02:05 - 00:17:03:11
Pekka Peljo
Is related to that. Yes.
00:17:03:11 - 00:17:17:24
Abigail Acton
Okay. Okay. All right, then. And so obviously, this is one of the things that you're looking at, because that's kind of crucial. You need to know that they can store and emit power and so on. Okay. So you've got these various parameters, all of which absolutely have to be met for the material to be viable as an alternative.
00:17:18:01 - 00:17:23:12
Abigail Acton
And so what are you using machine learning or how is it how you approaching and how do you do the mass screening?
00:17:23:14 - 00:17:48:10
Pekka Peljo
So to use the machine learning, first we have to train the models. And to do this, our collaborators, they calculated that exponentials will roughly 15,000 molecules. Wow. And then note that we have this data set, so then we can then we could train the machine to do the predictions and then finally to end up with a model that we can use to basically predict produce the production of any organic modeling.
00:17:48:12 - 00:17:55:17
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Fantastic. So did you identify any potentially interesting molecules that could be investigated further?
00:17:55:21 - 00:17:58:17
Pekka Peljo
So this resolution is only one of the parameters.
00:17:58:21 - 00:18:10:17
Abigail Acton
Of course, as we were saying, there's also stability in all the others as well. Yes, but if it doesn't have the redox potential, presumably you don't then carry on investigating it, because then if it doesn't have that, it doesn't matter because it won't work. So you start with the. Yeah.
00:18:10:19 - 00:18:23:21
Pekka Peljo
So sort of the impact of this is outcome is that No, we had this one too. So now then somebody has an idea that this looks like this could be interesting so they can start by first checking that. Does it make sense in terms of this robust potential.
00:18:24:00 - 00:18:24:17
Abigail Acton
To go further?
00:18:24:18 - 00:18:41:24
Pekka Peljo
To go ahead. Yeah. And now we have this tool so we can also take databases of existing molecules. So this database is the first, let's say, 2 million molecules. Wow. And then screen them. Excellent. And then pick those that are in the right range that this is something that they could study further.
00:18:42:02 - 00:18:57:18
Abigail Acton
That might have potential. Yes, maybe. Yeah. If it meets all the other parameters. But it's a very good way of initially weeding out the ones that clearly can't work so that people can save time, not looking at things that are going to be a dead end automatically. Super. What do you hope the outcome of the project's work will be?
00:18:57:18 - 00:19:12:13
Pekka Peljo
Pikka So now we have this tool that we can predict the British plans of any organic molecule. So then we hope that this will aid in accelerating this development of these compounds or the materials for the next there. This number is.
00:19:12:15 - 00:19:18:22
Abigail Acton
Excellent. And are there any organizations showing interest in using your your your, your tool, your idea?
00:19:18:24 - 00:19:24:08
Pekka Peljo
So this is going to be openly accessible to everybody. So there's been some interest already enter.
00:19:24:10 - 00:19:30:03
Abigail Acton
And how will people access It's going to be online. It's going to be some sort of platform that you have online or how would you share it? Yeah.
00:19:30:05 - 00:19:37:23
Pekka Peljo
Yes, it's a web application, so you can just go to the then application and then put the structure of the molecule there and then it gives us growth.
00:19:38:00 - 00:19:43:24
Abigail Acton
But it's this fantastic. I think this is excellent. Super. Thank you very much. Becca, does anyone have any questions? Yes, please.
00:19:44:01 - 00:20:09:13
Juan J. Vilatela
Thank you. Pick a very fascinating project. I was interesting in looking ahead. You know, you're factoring in a lot of the technical challenges with the choice choosing materials, but I can imagine batteries have multiple uses, multiple use cases with different power and energy requirements. And then on top of that, you have sourcing and other considerations. So how how much can these models evolve to take into account all these enormous complexity?
00:20:09:16 - 00:20:29:14
Pekka Peljo
That's a very good question. And actually we have Brozak continuation project running on this thing. I actually think of how to manufacture the chemicals so how to find the synthesis routes and how to use the machine learning. But even this sort of ability is very difficult to evaluate and stability is even bigger issue.
00:20:29:16 - 00:20:32:13
Abigail Acton
So why is the solubility difficult to evaluate?
00:20:32:16 - 00:20:54:21
Pekka Peljo
So this really as we can evaluate with quite simple computational methods, but then to evaluate the solubility, we need to know what is actually the crystal structure of the solid, so then we can evaluate what's the energy to dissolve the crystal. And it's very difficult to know what's the most stable crystal structure without doing experiments.
00:20:54:24 - 00:21:01:11
Abigail Acton
I see it's difficult to identify that without without the experimental work that you're trying to get around by having the computerized system.
00:21:01:13 - 00:21:26:20
Pekka Peljo
So it's if we would have a lot of experimental data, then we could maybe make a machine learning model to try to use that's been to evaluate, but to make good models for machine learning, we need a lot of data. So in our case, we had these 15,000 Legos and then we would need to have these solubility measurements for the I would say the more because then there are stabilities, there's two components in a crystal typically and so on, and it gets very complicated very quickly.
00:21:26:20 - 00:21:48:07
Abigail Acton
So it does it does sound immensely complex. Yeah. Yeah. Super. Thanks very much for the question. One. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Mica. I'm going to turn to Matthew. Matthew, what else has developed a novel battery for use in off road mobile machines like those used in the construction sector or mining, for example? Now we've been talking about electric cars and the storage of energy from renewables and so on.
00:21:48:09 - 00:22:00:18
Abigail Acton
But your work is focused on the extensive needs of the construction industry and other off road equipment. Can you explain why there is such a neutral alternative energy solutions for manufacturers of non road mobile machinery? What's the demand like?
00:22:00:19 - 00:22:22:05
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, well, first of all, you have to understand that the need for this kind of machines is different than the one you have for cars. And you can see it already today by the engines. The diesel engines are not the same in a construction equipment or in a heavy duty equipment than it is in a car, because these equipment are used much more heavily.
00:22:22:07 - 00:22:44:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
They're used like 4 to 8 hours per charge and sometimes several charges per day, whereas a car is only used 1 to 2 hours per day. And maybe once a year you have a you do or twice a year you do a fast charge. You know too, because you are doing your big trip of the year. But they are very rarely used intensively in the heavy duty equipment market.
00:22:44:07 - 00:23:12:00
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
You are using the battery like very intensively with a lot of fast charge. And also always you always need to have the same performance. I mean, you always need to to have the nominal performance that you need because you have to do production if indeed if yeah, I guess most of the people are now aware that a lithium ion battery loses capacity or loses mileage when needs to go.
00:23:12:02 - 00:23:25:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
For example, if you go in well in Finland in the winter, if it's cold and you leave your smartphone on your outside pocket, you loses a lot of energy very quickly. So it's same for all lithium ion technology, right.
00:23:25:14 - 00:23:32:04
Abigail Acton
And of course, much of this machinery is currently dependent on diesel, which is obviously a not a particularly environmentally friendly option. Indeed.
00:23:32:04 - 00:23:33:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yes, sure.
00:23:33:11 - 00:23:44:00
Abigail Acton
I suppose also for people managing industrial machines, the downtime necessary for recharging is horribly expensive. I mean, to have a machine that's not available for use because you're recharging.
00:23:44:05 - 00:24:05:24
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, it's true. If you can manage to have sufficient capacity to work for a full day, then your okay, you can charge at night, but most applications are so intensive that even with a big battery, you don't have a full day of autonomy. And so in this case you need to recharge to do a fast charging the brakes of the people.
00:24:05:24 - 00:24:10:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
And these brakes are not 4 hours or 8 hours.
00:24:10:19 - 00:24:13:02
Abigail Acton
Unfortunately for the people concerned. Yeah.
00:24:13:04 - 00:24:14:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
But fortunately for the productivity, no.
00:24:14:22 - 00:24:20:01
Abigail Acton
Indeed, indeed. And of course, the more charges you do, the less life of the battery. You know, you air the battery out after a while.
00:24:20:03 - 00:24:37:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. And the main concern, well, there are many reasons why fast charging is harming batteries, but the biggest one is the increase of temperature. Temperature increases, aging of the battery in an exponential way. I mean, it's electric industry. It's it's known. It's the Arrhenius law.
00:24:37:21 - 00:24:46:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. And so could I ask you the what else project was launched was hosted rather by the what Alps company. Yeah. So what was the solution that you guys came up with?
00:24:46:22 - 00:25:14:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, I was going to it exactly because you have to control temperature and we've developed basically what's today. The best way of controlling temperature for a lithium ion battery is we immerse the cells into a dielectric fluid, which is also biodegradable and nontoxic. And we have several patents on how to have a genius temperature inside a battery and to have a number of, you know, circulation of the fluid inside, even big battery packs.
00:25:14:17 - 00:25:26:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
And this allows this homogeneity allows for longer life and better performance, because this is always the weakest cell in the old battery system that is limiting the performance of the old system.
00:25:26:13 - 00:25:31:21
Abigail Acton
And has this not been done before? I mean, all the current ways of cooling this part of the battery.
00:25:31:23 - 00:25:43:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We are like, maybe there are three companies in the world which are as advanced as us for immersion cooling. I'm not counting the Formula One companies who are just, you know.
00:25:43:03 - 00:25:45:12
Abigail Acton
So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a different, different application.
00:25:45:12 - 00:25:48:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
This is €1 million for a batteries so different applications.
00:25:48:12 - 00:25:49:13
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
00:25:49:15 - 00:26:02:16
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
But we are like three companies in the world and we are, I guess we are the most advanced for immersion cooling with a very modular approach which can be very easily adapted.
00:26:02:16 - 00:26:09:02
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Could you explain the modularity? I'm trying to get in my mind's eye and I'm sure our listeners try as well to see what it is that you're doing.
00:26:09:02 - 00:26:32:16
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, we're building a battery module like this one. Yeah. You see, it's a very Endy one. It's a ten kilogram battery module. Then you can stack them to let together like a Lego brick. It's all Lego brick and you stack them together to form a Lego brick. And when you stack them, you, you build your hydraulics circuits. So by stacking them, you build your electric grid and it's formed like a heat exchanger.
00:26:32:16 - 00:26:52:22
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
So it's optimized for a homogeneous temperature and also theory and the modularity. So we can adapt, we can propose basically custom performance, but with Lego bricks that we can that are fully validated, very standard, and that we can very easily integrate into a lot of different applications.
00:26:52:23 - 00:27:03:04
Abigail Acton
And the fact that they're easily integrated and they're fully standard, I would imagine that also enables companies to use them without having to do so much training of staff and so on.
00:27:03:07 - 00:27:30:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Exactly. That's that's why we're targeting this non mobile machinery market, because they are not like car manufacturers and do not do 100,000 vehicles per year When they use several hundred or several thousand, it's already very good. So they need something very easy to integrate and very modular that they can use on their old range. And so they cannot use the same battery, the same car battery that you get in the car and put it in a lot of different machines.
00:27:30:21 - 00:27:37:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
This is not possible. So so they have to have something very modular. And that's why we developed something like this.
00:27:37:11 - 00:27:54:22
Abigail Acton
And the development in itself must have, you know, must have seen some high moments and some low moments. There must have been times where you thought, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Can you tell us a moment? For example, we had that lovely example of one where suddenly they realized that they could do this quickly, which is of course, very vital for making it financially feasible.
00:27:55:02 - 00:27:58:06
Abigail Acton
Did you have a eureka moment where actually something worked?
00:27:58:08 - 00:28:04:01
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, well, we are also very difficult moment where it didn't work.
00:28:04:05 - 00:28:06:05
Abigail Acton
Yes, of course. There's always ups and downs.
00:28:06:07 - 00:28:35:20
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. Basically we launched a third generation of our batteries last year. This is the output of the what else project and the second generation of batteries. We were starting to go to two other pilot customers and we saw that there was a big problem with the technology. So we had to stop marketing the for the second generation of battery, get them back to our plant, go to the lab, go back to the lab, do some fundamental research again to find what was the root cause, tried to find a solution.
00:28:35:22 - 00:29:04:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We found a solution. We really loved it. And then we validated scale by scale. Little by little. It took us two year to go to the full certification, and now we have the battery fully validated with first. Yeah, that was impressive. And this is the end of the project was very impressive. Basically, we went to qualification tests at external labs and every single test we bought them very, very well and even abusive testing where the battery should be dead afterwards or battery.
00:29:04:09 - 00:29:05:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Well, we're still functional now.
00:29:05:21 - 00:29:12:13
Abigail Acton
Must have been so satisfying after that really intense two years back to the drawing board and then you managed to pull it off. Bravo.
00:29:12:13 - 00:29:14:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, that was fantastic. Really?
00:29:14:11 - 00:29:28:09
Abigail Acton
Imagine. Excellent. And you do have ISO an SEE IEC certifications. I see that as well. That's excellent. And are you finding that industry you ask that question earlier, now I'm asking it to you. Are you finding the industry is showing some interest?
00:29:28:11 - 00:29:52:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
yeah, yeah. Now we are in a in I would say we're in a scale up phase like we did little production last year, you know, for prototypes and first demonstrators and our customers and now they've validated it and they're starting to ramp up production. And the production of this year will be approximately 9 to 10 times the production of last year.
00:29:52:14 - 00:29:53:20
Abigail Acton
So it must be wonderful.
00:29:53:22 - 00:30:04:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. And next year we'll be even even bigger. And so so like at least three times what we're doing this year and hopefully like five times. And so So we'll see.
00:30:04:12 - 00:30:05:15
Abigail Acton
Perfect.
00:30:05:17 - 00:30:11:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We'll see. We can keep up the pace. But, you know, we well, a lot a lot of market traction. That's very good.
00:30:11:13 - 00:30:19:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that's excellent. I'm so pleased for you. Do you have any questions for Matthew? lovely. Lots of questions. I'm going to go with Becca first and then one, please.
00:30:19:10 - 00:30:26:01
Pekka Peljo
And it's not very interesting. I was actually wondering how this modularity actually helps with the recycling.
00:30:26:03 - 00:30:55:11
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
very good question. And thank you. So basically we've designed the battery modular so that we can easily integrate it into a first hi demanding application, but also so that we can take the battery back when they're worn out for the first application and repurpose then for the second application. And we've not designed the mechanical and the hydraulics so that we can do that, but we've also designed the electronics so that we we have also a user story so we can give a warranty on the second life of the battery.
00:30:55:16 - 00:31:14:00
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
So we've been thinking that all batteries so that to maximize its usage all along the value chain because we maximize life, we know we can have a good second life resources, then we control the temperature, so we maximize life and we can have a very good second life because we've we've been working very good conditions for the old first life.
00:31:14:01 - 00:31:22:20
Abigail Acton
Excellent. So it's beyond the notion of simply just recycling, but you are actually releasing them back into the system to be used again and again. Very good. Yeah.
00:31:22:20 - 00:31:45:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
When they are at the very end of their life there are designed to be dismantled easily, safely. That is to say we have competitors who are, you know, gluing all cells into form, which is then very difficult to dismantle or disconnect them or batteries are meant to be very easily dismantled. And what cannot be dismantled can go into a classical crusher for recycling.
00:31:45:21 - 00:31:56:13
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Yeah, that's excellent. Thank you. Thank you for continuing that. And I was also going to mention that, of course, the cooling must mean that you can use more superfast charging as well. Yeah, you must be able to charge more quickly.
00:31:56:13 - 00:31:58:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. Very fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:58:13 - 00:32:00:21
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Superb. Thank you. When you had a question. Yeah.
00:32:00:21 - 00:32:10:05
Juan J. Vilatela
I was interested in how you deal with different cell designs, because sometimes there are so many the shape changes that the dimensions, the voltage and so on. How do you deal with that?
00:32:10:07 - 00:32:33:01
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. So we before funding what helps me and one of my partner, we designed a lot of batteries with cylindrical cells, prismatic cells, pouch cells and a lot of different type of cells. And when we decided to go for immersion cooling, we chose the cylindrical shape. So we are with standard cylindrical cells like 18, six, 50 or 2170.
00:32:33:04 - 00:33:00:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Why did we choose this is because we can have a very compact design and there is still a a natural distance between the cells where you can flow the liquid to cool them down. And since there are very little, it's harder for us to assemble and exchange of these to cool down. The chemistry is much wider. So we are much better at cooling small cells than at cooling big cells.
00:33:00:09 - 00:33:01:14
Abigail Acton
Bigger surface area.
00:33:01:16 - 00:33:23:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, because bigger surface area also in terms of safety, when there is a problem on one cell, it's it's it's not as big a problem as a problem on a big, big cell. So that's why we chose this format. But the technology is also possible to be done on on bigger cells. And the first research project we did at the CIA ten years ago was with prismatic rigid cells.
00:33:23:04 - 00:33:42:00
Abigail Acton
Super. I think that answers that very well. Well, I would like to make an observation to all of you. I didn't know very much. I think it's fairly obvious. I didn't know very much about batteries at all. And now I feel I know much more. And I'm also more interested in the subject than I was before I went down this road with you all.
00:33:42:02 - 00:33:51:07
Abigail Acton
And I will not be thinking so lightly every time I recharge my phone. It's good to know that there is new technology down the pipeline. Thank you so very much for your time.
00:33:51:07 - 00:33:53:08
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Thank you. Thank you to all of you.
00:33:53:10 - 00:33:53:24
Pekka Peljo
Thank you.
00:33:54:01 - 00:33:56:08
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. It was lovely to have you.
00:33:56:11 - 00:33:57:17
Juan J. Vilatela
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
00:33:57:19 - 00:34:20:11
Abigail Acton
Yes, indeed. Wasn't it? Thanks very much. One, if you've enjoyed this podcast and are interested in the latest scientific research coming out to the EU, have a listen to previous episodes. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the Cordis website. We've looked at how I can help beekeepers and instant on the skin tests for TB.
00:34:20:13 - 00:34:47:00
Abigail Acton
In our last 29 episodes. There'll be something there to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you're interested about what other EU funded projects are doing to innovate battery design. The CORDIS website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from string theory to political theory.
00:34:47:02 - 00:35:08:05
Abigail Acton
There is something that for you, maybe you're involved in a project or would like to apply for funding. Take a look at what others are doing in your domain. So come and check out the research that's revealing what makes our world tick. We're always happy to hear from you. Drop us a line editorial@cordis.europa.eu . Until next time you be.
This is an AI transcription.
00:00:10:05 - 00:00:16:02
Abigail Acton
This is CORDIScovery.
00:00:16:04 - 00:00:40:12
Abigail Acton
Hello and welcome to this episode of CORDIScovery with me, Abigail Acton. If we are to meet our decarbonization targets, we need to reshape the production, storage and distribution of electricity. Off road equipment used in construction and other sectors is still very heavily reliant on diesel. The cost of downtime to recharge current electric batteries puts off industrial consumers, as does the short life of the batteries, which then need to be replaced.
00:00:40:14 - 00:01:02:21
Abigail Acton
In many ways, battery technology hasn't developed to keep pace with our growing need for portable power storage devices that can balance out the intermittent power produced by renewable sources and our energy demand would be ideal. Identify viable novel materials to make a new generation of batteries getting past bottlenecks and lithium supply set to get even worse as the demand for electric vehicles takes off.
00:01:02:23 - 00:01:28:01
Abigail Acton
Newly designed cooling systems to speed up recharging time and prolong the lives of batteries and harnessing the power of silicon. Today's episode is looking at breakthroughs in battery design that could affect all of us supported by EU research funding. Our guests are here to recharge our interest in the often overlooked component of our lives. Batteries. Juan J. Vilatela leads a research group at IMDEA Materials in Madrid.
00:01:28:03 - 00:01:38:18
Abigail Acton
His scientific career is focused on methods for synthesis, an assembly of 1D nanomaterials into microplastic, nano textiles for energy and structural applications. Welcome one.
00:01:38:20 - 00:01:40:09
Juan J. Vilatela
Hi there. Thank you.
00:01:40:11 - 00:01:56:07
Abigail Acton
There Pekka Peljo is Associate Professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Turku, Finland. He's interested in accelerating the development of the stationary electricity storage technologies for storing wind and solar power, but also in fundamental electrochemistry. Welcome, Pekka.
00:01:56:09 - 00:01:58:00
Pekka Peljo
Thank you. Nice to be here.
00:01:58:02 - 00:02:19:04
Abigail Acton
Good to have you. Matthieu Desbois is president and one of the co-founders of WATTALPS. He has dedicated his career to optimizing energy consumption and emissions in mobile applications, firstly focusing on hybrid cars and then to all kind of vehicles and machines. His interests lie in electrification, batteries and their optimization. Welcome, Matthieu.
00:02:19:06 - 00:02:22:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Hello. Nice to be here. And share the batteries.
00:02:22:11 - 00:02:43:23
Abigail Acton
Yes, let's talk batteries. Let's talk batteries. First of all, with one now one. Silicon has great potential for use in next generation batteries. And the synergy project you coordinated tackled the challenges of producing nanostructure silicon. That creates a simple, scalable process to result in thick electrodes that are economically feasible. So tell us what is intriguing the synergy team now.
00:02:44:02 - 00:02:44:18
Abigail Acton
Yes.
00:02:44:20 - 00:03:03:03
Juan J. Vilatela
What we're trying to do and what's intriguing us is how to introduce silicon in lithium ion batteries. In lithium ion batteries, you know, the kind that we carry around because you carry them, they have a different structure and they need to be light. But also they're a bit like if you look at them on the inside, they're a bit like a sandwich.
00:03:03:03 - 00:03:26:19
Juan J. Vilatela
So they have multiple layers. And one of those layers is a key ingredient is the negative electrode where the charge is stored. And this is called the anode, this negative electrode. Today we use graphite and silicon is very important because silicon could store ten times more charge than graphite. Well, and that's why silicon is considered a key ingredient for the next generation.
00:03:26:19 - 00:03:28:20
Juan J. Vilatela
Lithium ion batteries, the third generation.
00:03:28:23 - 00:03:36:13
Abigail Acton
Well, it sounds obviously ideal. I mean, everyone likes the idea of their devices running that much longer. So what's holding back the use of silicon while using silicon already?
00:03:36:18 - 00:04:00:11
Juan J. Vilatela
Yeah, in graphite and other materials, the charge is stored in little holes in the material in the crystal. To simplify in silicon, they do mix together and swell, so that can often degraded a little bit over time. So it means that the challenge is to. Well, one of the challenges is to make sure that it is preserved, that it doesn't degrade.
00:04:00:13 - 00:04:11:15
Juan J. Vilatela
And the most effective way of doing that is probably to make it very, very small, so small that it's smaller than a crack that or a defect. That means making it nano sized so super small.
00:04:11:20 - 00:04:17:14
Abigail Acton
So, in fact, making it so small that in fact the degradation can't happen. Yeah, right. Okay. This is fascinating.
00:04:17:18 - 00:04:43:13
Juan J. Vilatela
That's a general idea. So on the one hand, you want to make it very small so it doesn't degrade, but to make it useful, at least for, for instance, electric vehicles, we need to make about 10,000 tonnes of these per year. So there's this conflicting. Yeah. Scales and that is, that's has that is probably, I think, the biggest challenge to be able to produce it on a large scale with this level of refinement.
00:04:43:18 - 00:04:49:23
Abigail Acton
And at this particular nano size. Yeah. So how did Synergy manage to rise to the challenge of producing nano silicon?
00:04:50:01 - 00:05:12:24
Juan J. Vilatela
We developed a process from scratch altogether where we transform a gas that has silicon into a nano textile. So let me try to go through the steps, this process. So imagine a pipe, a tube. Right. Which is the reactor. And this can be the pipe, like a big pipe you would see in a pool, for instance. Right. So we insert gas in it.
00:05:12:24 - 00:05:36:22
Juan J. Vilatela
So there's gas flowing through it. And we also produce a mist, like a cloud of very tiny particles, catalyst particles that act like seeds. And if we supply a little bit of heat as all of these flows through this pipe, what happens is that the silicon gas transforms into nanowires so very, very long wires that because they're flowing through this pipe, they all entangle a bit like cooked spaghetti.
00:05:37:02 - 00:05:54:21
Juan J. Vilatela
And that's important because it means that at the outlet of this pipe, what you have is a solid material, like a textile, almost like office paper. And it means that we have almost a finished electrode already. So this is important, for instance, because you don't make a powder that you need to then mix with solvents and so on.
00:05:54:21 - 00:06:13:02
Juan J. Vilatela
So in one step you convert a gas or precursor into a fully finished electric and it's nano sized. But what's very important, and I guess perhaps unique about this method of doing it is that by doing it as everything runs through this pipe, you can do it super fast so we can convert the gas into a solid in a couple of seconds.
00:06:13:03 - 00:06:13:18
Abigail Acton
Wow.
00:06:13:19 - 00:06:33:10
Juan J. Vilatela
I mean, this is what was a bit of a surprise. And that suggests to us that we can, therefore that this will be cost effective as this is scaled up because we need to make a large amount, but also that we will be able to produce it very fast to scale up exponentially because this is really urgent. If you wanted to introduce it in batteries.
00:06:33:12 - 00:06:41:01
Abigail Acton
You said yourself that it's so it almost took the team by surprise how quickly it happened. That must have been a hell of a moment when you realized. Can you remember that?
00:06:41:01 - 00:07:01:23
Juan J. Vilatela
Yes, because, I mean, we were chasing these results, but there was some uncertainty as to whether this could happen or not. And then when the student came and showed it to me, it was just one of those days you will never forget, especially because, I mean, this is going back five years. And I could just I just knew that we would be, you know, five years down the line, we would be scaling up and this is what we're doing now.
00:07:01:23 - 00:07:09:19
Juan J. Vilatela
So we my student and I found that a company floated and for two years it's been industrializing the process and I'm still optimistic.
00:07:09:21 - 00:07:18:15
Abigail Acton
Yeah, I'm not surprised. You have every right to be optimistic indeed. Adam, can you tell me what industries would benefit from from this product, from this nano silicon?
00:07:18:21 - 00:07:50:01
Juan J. Vilatela
I mean, everywhere where there is a battery that moves to simplify. So of course, one huge area of impact would be electric vehicles, because, you know, if we combine these improvements in their lecturer in the negative electrode with other improvements in the positive electrode that other people are looking at and so on. And and I guess what other people are doing in terms of the park and so on, I think we can probably double the range of an electric vehicle and that could really be a trigger point or a tipping point for people to adopt, to adopt more electric vehicles.
00:07:50:03 - 00:08:06:11
Juan J. Vilatela
And that would have a huge impact on reducing emissions of mobility. So that is a big area of improvement. And another one is, of course, things that fly like drones use in agriculture, in emergencies and so on. So everything that moves needs a battery and that today we cannot electrify easily.
00:08:06:11 - 00:08:24:20
Abigail Acton
Excellent. And then therefore also from as you say, a wider range which I can imagine actually drones being used in an emergency situation to know that they had the power to fly much longer would be wonderful. Excellent. So one, what caused you to find this interesting? You said that you had a student and you were looking at this.
00:08:24:20 - 00:08:26:15
Abigail Acton
Why did you get into this area of research?
00:08:26:16 - 00:08:47:01
Juan J. Vilatela
Actually, I've been working with nanomaterials for, well, ever since I started working as a scientist over 20 years. And I guess I've been through a lot of the I've seen the great expectations people have put on nanomaterials and, you know, they make the news and then they, you know, everyone forgets about them. And so, you know, those of us still in the field persevere.
00:08:47:03 - 00:09:23:16
Juan J. Vilatela
And there are some examples where nano materials are just hugely necessary. I mean, a regular battery already has nanomaterials in it. So everyone here today is carrying nanomaterial in their pocket, I think from what I hear in other electrodes. So they are making a difference and they will transform the way we move. Without a doubt. So that has been a huge motivation for me and in particular the fact that this application involves mobility means that we do have a chance now to to move the needle and reduce emissions substantially, because this goes to the core of one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions.
00:09:23:16 - 00:09:27:18
Juan J. Vilatela
So that is a dream come true to be able to work on a project like this one.
00:09:27:20 - 00:09:32:18
Abigail Acton
Excellent. No, indeed. Yeah, very good. Any any questions at all for one, guys. Yeah. Matthew.
00:09:32:20 - 00:10:00:14
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, a lot of questions. Well, first of all, congratulations on the job already done and yeah, it's impressive. I know everybody is working on silicon and you, you, you said it's really difficult to manage the swelling of the silicon and I didn't fully get it all. You do it. I understand the way you manufacture the electrode. What I don't understand is how you keep the structure, the mechanical structure of the electrode and how you make it.
00:10:00:14 - 00:10:08:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Also the electrical contact between all these very small particles. How do you make sure that you still can pull the electrons out of them?
00:10:08:04 - 00:10:27:24
Juan J. Vilatela
I'll try to give a brief answer because this is a very, very good question. They would give us enough to to grab a coffee together. But because the particles are very long and thin like wires, they entangle. So this entanglement gives a lot of cohesion to the material. It means that the swelling still swelling happens, but they do not disconnect.
00:10:27:24 - 00:10:54:15
Juan J. Vilatela
They do not break apart. If you have powder and like a agglomerated powder and it's just a disconnect. So that's one aspect of it, that these entangled networks, it's a network rather than, you know, like a sintered powder. And the electrical part is super interesting. We're actually looking at the fundamentals of that as we as we speak, but you can optionally put a bit of conductor.
00:10:54:15 - 00:11:16:24
Juan J. Vilatela
But the truth is you don't really need it because the electrical conductivity of silicon is enough because you don't have a lot of junctions in this network. Again, because they're very long and thin, you have very you need very few wires to bridge electrodes. So the key is that the geometry, by walking away from spherical particles to very long, thin particles, you get a lot of you benefit from the properties of the crystal itself.
00:11:17:01 - 00:11:23:05
Abigail Acton
Thank you. That was an excellent answer. I followed it completely. That was perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Did you have a question?
00:11:23:07 - 00:11:32:11
Pekka Peljo
Yeah. So actually. So now there's lots of interest on the solid-state electrolytes. So you are you nanowires actually compatible with? That's what.
00:11:32:13 - 00:12:01:20
Juan J. Vilatela
It is. And I am fascinated by that prospect because that could be the next big revolution in lithium ion batteries from from what experts like you tell me. And there are the fact that we have a mechanically very robust anode can actually be very beneficial because these electrolytes is solid electrolytes and they are assemble in radically different ways involving high pressure during fabrication and then during operation.
00:12:01:20 - 00:12:14:16
Juan J. Vilatela
So this mechanical integrity is critical and we have very good results in the lab from one of my students. So I'm very, very encouraged. But there's just so much to learn on electrolytes.
00:12:14:18 - 00:12:27:08
Abigail Acton
That's like there's so much to learn from, from all of all of it really massively complex portable power. And we use it without even thinking. I mean, you know, people like me, consumers use it without even thinking, Excellent. Any more questions at all? mature. You have a question?
00:12:27:08 - 00:12:40:05
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Just one little question on on where you are in terms of market, are you close to the market? Do you have already big companies testing your product? Where are you? Basically.
00:12:40:07 - 00:13:10:14
Juan J. Vilatela
We are building a pilot plant to manufacture continuous rolls that we can then that would directly be shipped to the manufacturers of cells for us, for pre-commercial trials. And we already have some of them make cells, specialty cells, and so the manufacture is going well. We I hope we can be making a small packs or enough material to produce packs towards the end of next year.
00:13:10:16 - 00:13:17:08
Abigail Acton
That's excellent. One that's really around the corner almost really great, excellent stuff. And you're optimistic.
00:13:17:10 - 00:13:19:22
Juan J. Vilatela
Always.
00:13:19:24 - 00:13:38:24
Abigail Acton
No alternative really, is there? Yeah, Very good. Thank you so much. I'm going to turn to take a back to the combat project focused on ways of identifying what new materials could be used in flow batteries using machine learning and high throughput screening. And you briefly explain how a flow battery works for those of us who've never given it much thought and what the drawbacks are, please.
00:13:39:05 - 00:14:07:03
Pekka Peljo
So in typical batteries, the energy is stored in the reactor, but in flow batteries you add to tanks and you store the energy in the liquid. So if you need more energy storage capacity, you can sustain bigger things. So this makes these systems quite nice for storing energy for a longer duration, like for 4 to 8 hours. But the most common is less technology technologies.
00:14:07:03 - 00:14:32:11
Pekka Peljo
They are relying on vanadium. But why do need this? These technologies for energy storage is that if you want to have this renewable energy based system, we need some mace to keep the lights on when there is no wind or solar. But B, those are. So at the moment the best option is actually just to pump water uphill and then finally through the turbine.
00:14:32:13 - 00:14:51:12
Pekka Peljo
But then this is not very practical in all locations. So that's why we have been looking at this for batteries. And then the challenge is that when the radium is not exactly the most abundant material, it's not too rare, but it's in the borderland. So we would like to replace that with some other options.
00:14:51:16 - 00:15:04:03
Abigail Acton
Right. Okay. And so can you tell me, how are alternative materials currently evaluated and what is combat doing differently? So there must be other groups of people research interested in finding alternative materials. How does your project combat differ?
00:15:04:08 - 00:15:31:14
Pekka Peljo
So this sort of traditional approach is very much focused on this, that somebody has an idea or intuition to try something, and then these materials have to be prepared and purified and characterized actually is the right material and then tested. And these days typically a lot of thing. So that's an example of this due to mind batteries development started in the seventies and then some but developed in the eighties and then first commercialization in the nineties, right?
00:15:31:14 - 00:15:36:12
Abigail Acton
Nearly 20 years then, Yes, to go from lithium might be a good idea to lithium ion batteries.
00:15:36:14 - 00:16:05:02
Pekka Peljo
Yes. Wow. So this is very sort of time consuming. Yeah. What we looked at in going about combat project was to try to develop tools to accelerate this development. So for new materials, we have quite strict requirements. We have to have the right to work. It's right. Solubility is high enough, stability and preferably also environmentally friendly. So sustainable materials and also at low cost.
00:16:05:04 - 00:16:08:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah I mean quite a lot of ask so yeah.
00:16:08:08 - 00:16:31:20
Pekka Peljo
Yes so this is the challenge. So we started to think how can we use these computational tools that have been developed for the last 10 to 20 years to try to help us to accelerate this development. So in this project, these screened accommodations to evaluate the rate of and so this is probably this is related to the cell block, basal cell wall, this of the building.
00:16:31:22 - 00:16:39:00
Abigail Acton
I'm going to second let me stop you for a second. See the redox potential. What is that? That the amount of power that the battery can hold or the amount of power that the battery will give out?
00:16:39:01 - 00:16:43:11
Pekka Peljo
No, this is the cell wall. This is the difference between the two, the rest of the cells.
00:16:43:11 - 00:16:44:00
Abigail Acton
Okay.
00:16:44:01 - 00:16:53:18
Pekka Peljo
And then the reference this is also the symbol. This then is one of the parameters that defines how much energy you can store and how much power you can get, though.
00:16:53:20 - 00:16:54:03
Abigail Acton
Right.
00:16:54:04 - 00:16:56:05
Pekka Peljo
Is it Tokamak is.
00:16:56:07 - 00:17:02:00
Abigail Acton
Going to get it up? No, no, that's fine. They're not about that. You can put in and the amount of power you can get up, that's absolutely fine. And that's the redox potential.
00:17:02:05 - 00:17:03:11
Pekka Peljo
Is related to that. Yes.
00:17:03:11 - 00:17:17:24
Abigail Acton
Okay. Okay. All right, then. And so obviously, this is one of the things that you're looking at, because that's kind of crucial. You need to know that they can store and emit power and so on. Okay. So you've got these various parameters, all of which absolutely have to be met for the material to be viable as an alternative.
00:17:18:01 - 00:17:23:12
Abigail Acton
And so what are you using machine learning or how is it how you approaching and how do you do the mass screening?
00:17:23:14 - 00:17:48:10
Pekka Peljo
So to use the machine learning, first we have to train the models. And to do this, our collaborators, they calculated that exponentials will roughly 15,000 molecules. Wow. And then note that we have this data set, so then we can then we could train the machine to do the predictions and then finally to end up with a model that we can use to basically predict produce the production of any organic modeling.
00:17:48:12 - 00:17:55:17
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Fantastic. So did you identify any potentially interesting molecules that could be investigated further?
00:17:55:21 - 00:17:58:17
Pekka Peljo
So this resolution is only one of the parameters.
00:17:58:21 - 00:18:10:17
Abigail Acton
Of course, as we were saying, there's also stability in all the others as well. Yes, but if it doesn't have the redox potential, presumably you don't then carry on investigating it, because then if it doesn't have that, it doesn't matter because it won't work. So you start with the. Yeah.
00:18:10:19 - 00:18:23:21
Pekka Peljo
So sort of the impact of this is outcome is that No, we had this one too. So now then somebody has an idea that this looks like this could be interesting so they can start by first checking that. Does it make sense in terms of this robust potential.
00:18:24:00 - 00:18:24:17
Abigail Acton
To go further?
00:18:24:18 - 00:18:41:24
Pekka Peljo
To go ahead. Yeah. And now we have this tool so we can also take databases of existing molecules. So this database is the first, let's say, 2 million molecules. Wow. And then screen them. Excellent. And then pick those that are in the right range that this is something that they could study further.
00:18:42:02 - 00:18:57:18
Abigail Acton
That might have potential. Yes, maybe. Yeah. If it meets all the other parameters. But it's a very good way of initially weeding out the ones that clearly can't work so that people can save time, not looking at things that are going to be a dead end automatically. Super. What do you hope the outcome of the project's work will be?
00:18:57:18 - 00:19:12:13
Pekka Peljo
Pikka So now we have this tool that we can predict the British plans of any organic molecule. So then we hope that this will aid in accelerating this development of these compounds or the materials for the next there. This number is.
00:19:12:15 - 00:19:18:22
Abigail Acton
Excellent. And are there any organizations showing interest in using your your your, your tool, your idea?
00:19:18:24 - 00:19:24:08
Pekka Peljo
So this is going to be openly accessible to everybody. So there's been some interest already enter.
00:19:24:10 - 00:19:30:03
Abigail Acton
And how will people access It's going to be online. It's going to be some sort of platform that you have online or how would you share it? Yeah.
00:19:30:05 - 00:19:37:23
Pekka Peljo
Yes, it's a web application, so you can just go to the then application and then put the structure of the molecule there and then it gives us growth.
00:19:38:00 - 00:19:43:24
Abigail Acton
But it's this fantastic. I think this is excellent. Super. Thank you very much. Becca, does anyone have any questions? Yes, please.
00:19:44:01 - 00:20:09:13
Juan J. Vilatela
Thank you. Pick a very fascinating project. I was interesting in looking ahead. You know, you're factoring in a lot of the technical challenges with the choice choosing materials, but I can imagine batteries have multiple uses, multiple use cases with different power and energy requirements. And then on top of that, you have sourcing and other considerations. So how how much can these models evolve to take into account all these enormous complexity?
00:20:09:16 - 00:20:29:14
Pekka Peljo
That's a very good question. And actually we have Brozak continuation project running on this thing. I actually think of how to manufacture the chemicals so how to find the synthesis routes and how to use the machine learning. But even this sort of ability is very difficult to evaluate and stability is even bigger issue.
00:20:29:16 - 00:20:32:13
Abigail Acton
So why is the solubility difficult to evaluate?
00:20:32:16 - 00:20:54:21
Pekka Peljo
So this really as we can evaluate with quite simple computational methods, but then to evaluate the solubility, we need to know what is actually the crystal structure of the solid, so then we can evaluate what's the energy to dissolve the crystal. And it's very difficult to know what's the most stable crystal structure without doing experiments.
00:20:54:24 - 00:21:01:11
Abigail Acton
I see it's difficult to identify that without without the experimental work that you're trying to get around by having the computerized system.
00:21:01:13 - 00:21:26:20
Pekka Peljo
So it's if we would have a lot of experimental data, then we could maybe make a machine learning model to try to use that's been to evaluate, but to make good models for machine learning, we need a lot of data. So in our case, we had these 15,000 Legos and then we would need to have these solubility measurements for the I would say the more because then there are stabilities, there's two components in a crystal typically and so on, and it gets very complicated very quickly.
00:21:26:20 - 00:21:48:07
Abigail Acton
So it does it does sound immensely complex. Yeah. Yeah. Super. Thanks very much for the question. One. Okay. Well, thank you very much, Mica. I'm going to turn to Matthew. Matthew, what else has developed a novel battery for use in off road mobile machines like those used in the construction sector or mining, for example? Now we've been talking about electric cars and the storage of energy from renewables and so on.
00:21:48:09 - 00:22:00:18
Abigail Acton
But your work is focused on the extensive needs of the construction industry and other off road equipment. Can you explain why there is such a neutral alternative energy solutions for manufacturers of non road mobile machinery? What's the demand like?
00:22:00:19 - 00:22:22:05
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, well, first of all, you have to understand that the need for this kind of machines is different than the one you have for cars. And you can see it already today by the engines. The diesel engines are not the same in a construction equipment or in a heavy duty equipment than it is in a car, because these equipment are used much more heavily.
00:22:22:07 - 00:22:44:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
They're used like 4 to 8 hours per charge and sometimes several charges per day, whereas a car is only used 1 to 2 hours per day. And maybe once a year you have a you do or twice a year you do a fast charge. You know too, because you are doing your big trip of the year. But they are very rarely used intensively in the heavy duty equipment market.
00:22:44:07 - 00:23:12:00
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
You are using the battery like very intensively with a lot of fast charge. And also always you always need to have the same performance. I mean, you always need to to have the nominal performance that you need because you have to do production if indeed if yeah, I guess most of the people are now aware that a lithium ion battery loses capacity or loses mileage when needs to go.
00:23:12:02 - 00:23:25:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
For example, if you go in well in Finland in the winter, if it's cold and you leave your smartphone on your outside pocket, you loses a lot of energy very quickly. So it's same for all lithium ion technology, right.
00:23:25:14 - 00:23:32:04
Abigail Acton
And of course, much of this machinery is currently dependent on diesel, which is obviously a not a particularly environmentally friendly option. Indeed.
00:23:32:04 - 00:23:33:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yes, sure.
00:23:33:11 - 00:23:44:00
Abigail Acton
I suppose also for people managing industrial machines, the downtime necessary for recharging is horribly expensive. I mean, to have a machine that's not available for use because you're recharging.
00:23:44:05 - 00:24:05:24
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, it's true. If you can manage to have sufficient capacity to work for a full day, then your okay, you can charge at night, but most applications are so intensive that even with a big battery, you don't have a full day of autonomy. And so in this case you need to recharge to do a fast charging the brakes of the people.
00:24:05:24 - 00:24:10:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
And these brakes are not 4 hours or 8 hours.
00:24:10:19 - 00:24:13:02
Abigail Acton
Unfortunately for the people concerned. Yeah.
00:24:13:04 - 00:24:14:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
But fortunately for the productivity, no.
00:24:14:22 - 00:24:20:01
Abigail Acton
Indeed, indeed. And of course, the more charges you do, the less life of the battery. You know, you air the battery out after a while.
00:24:20:03 - 00:24:37:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. And the main concern, well, there are many reasons why fast charging is harming batteries, but the biggest one is the increase of temperature. Temperature increases, aging of the battery in an exponential way. I mean, it's electric industry. It's it's known. It's the Arrhenius law.
00:24:37:21 - 00:24:46:20
Abigail Acton
Okay. And so could I ask you the what else project was launched was hosted rather by the what Alps company. Yeah. So what was the solution that you guys came up with?
00:24:46:22 - 00:25:14:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, I was going to it exactly because you have to control temperature and we've developed basically what's today. The best way of controlling temperature for a lithium ion battery is we immerse the cells into a dielectric fluid, which is also biodegradable and nontoxic. And we have several patents on how to have a genius temperature inside a battery and to have a number of, you know, circulation of the fluid inside, even big battery packs.
00:25:14:17 - 00:25:26:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
And this allows this homogeneity allows for longer life and better performance, because this is always the weakest cell in the old battery system that is limiting the performance of the old system.
00:25:26:13 - 00:25:31:21
Abigail Acton
And has this not been done before? I mean, all the current ways of cooling this part of the battery.
00:25:31:23 - 00:25:43:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We are like, maybe there are three companies in the world which are as advanced as us for immersion cooling. I'm not counting the Formula One companies who are just, you know.
00:25:43:03 - 00:25:45:12
Abigail Acton
So yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a different, different application.
00:25:45:12 - 00:25:48:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
This is €1 million for a batteries so different applications.
00:25:48:12 - 00:25:49:13
Abigail Acton
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
00:25:49:15 - 00:26:02:16
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
But we are like three companies in the world and we are, I guess we are the most advanced for immersion cooling with a very modular approach which can be very easily adapted.
00:26:02:16 - 00:26:09:02
Abigail Acton
Yeah. Could you explain the modularity? I'm trying to get in my mind's eye and I'm sure our listeners try as well to see what it is that you're doing.
00:26:09:02 - 00:26:32:16
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, we're building a battery module like this one. Yeah. You see, it's a very Endy one. It's a ten kilogram battery module. Then you can stack them to let together like a Lego brick. It's all Lego brick and you stack them together to form a Lego brick. And when you stack them, you, you build your hydraulics circuits. So by stacking them, you build your electric grid and it's formed like a heat exchanger.
00:26:32:16 - 00:26:52:22
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
So it's optimized for a homogeneous temperature and also theory and the modularity. So we can adapt, we can propose basically custom performance, but with Lego bricks that we can that are fully validated, very standard, and that we can very easily integrate into a lot of different applications.
00:26:52:23 - 00:27:03:04
Abigail Acton
And the fact that they're easily integrated and they're fully standard, I would imagine that also enables companies to use them without having to do so much training of staff and so on.
00:27:03:07 - 00:27:30:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Exactly. That's that's why we're targeting this non mobile machinery market, because they are not like car manufacturers and do not do 100,000 vehicles per year When they use several hundred or several thousand, it's already very good. So they need something very easy to integrate and very modular that they can use on their old range. And so they cannot use the same battery, the same car battery that you get in the car and put it in a lot of different machines.
00:27:30:21 - 00:27:37:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
This is not possible. So so they have to have something very modular. And that's why we developed something like this.
00:27:37:11 - 00:27:54:22
Abigail Acton
And the development in itself must have, you know, must have seen some high moments and some low moments. There must have been times where you thought, Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Can you tell us a moment? For example, we had that lovely example of one where suddenly they realized that they could do this quickly, which is of course, very vital for making it financially feasible.
00:27:55:02 - 00:27:58:06
Abigail Acton
Did you have a eureka moment where actually something worked?
00:27:58:08 - 00:28:04:01
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, well, we are also very difficult moment where it didn't work.
00:28:04:05 - 00:28:06:05
Abigail Acton
Yes, of course. There's always ups and downs.
00:28:06:07 - 00:28:35:20
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. Basically we launched a third generation of our batteries last year. This is the output of the what else project and the second generation of batteries. We were starting to go to two other pilot customers and we saw that there was a big problem with the technology. So we had to stop marketing the for the second generation of battery, get them back to our plant, go to the lab, go back to the lab, do some fundamental research again to find what was the root cause, tried to find a solution.
00:28:35:22 - 00:29:04:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We found a solution. We really loved it. And then we validated scale by scale. Little by little. It took us two year to go to the full certification, and now we have the battery fully validated with first. Yeah, that was impressive. And this is the end of the project was very impressive. Basically, we went to qualification tests at external labs and every single test we bought them very, very well and even abusive testing where the battery should be dead afterwards or battery.
00:29:04:09 - 00:29:05:21
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Well, we're still functional now.
00:29:05:21 - 00:29:12:13
Abigail Acton
Must have been so satisfying after that really intense two years back to the drawing board and then you managed to pull it off. Bravo.
00:29:12:13 - 00:29:14:09
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, that was fantastic. Really?
00:29:14:11 - 00:29:28:09
Abigail Acton
Imagine. Excellent. And you do have ISO an SEE IEC certifications. I see that as well. That's excellent. And are you finding that industry you ask that question earlier, now I'm asking it to you. Are you finding the industry is showing some interest?
00:29:28:11 - 00:29:52:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
yeah, yeah. Now we are in a in I would say we're in a scale up phase like we did little production last year, you know, for prototypes and first demonstrators and our customers and now they've validated it and they're starting to ramp up production. And the production of this year will be approximately 9 to 10 times the production of last year.
00:29:52:14 - 00:29:53:20
Abigail Acton
So it must be wonderful.
00:29:53:22 - 00:30:04:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. And next year we'll be even even bigger. And so so like at least three times what we're doing this year and hopefully like five times. And so So we'll see.
00:30:04:12 - 00:30:05:15
Abigail Acton
Perfect.
00:30:05:17 - 00:30:11:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
We'll see. We can keep up the pace. But, you know, we well, a lot a lot of market traction. That's very good.
00:30:11:13 - 00:30:19:08
Abigail Acton
Yeah, that's excellent. I'm so pleased for you. Do you have any questions for Matthew? lovely. Lots of questions. I'm going to go with Becca first and then one, please.
00:30:19:10 - 00:30:26:01
Pekka Peljo
And it's not very interesting. I was actually wondering how this modularity actually helps with the recycling.
00:30:26:03 - 00:30:55:11
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
very good question. And thank you. So basically we've designed the battery modular so that we can easily integrate it into a first hi demanding application, but also so that we can take the battery back when they're worn out for the first application and repurpose then for the second application. And we've not designed the mechanical and the hydraulics so that we can do that, but we've also designed the electronics so that we we have also a user story so we can give a warranty on the second life of the battery.
00:30:55:16 - 00:31:14:00
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
So we've been thinking that all batteries so that to maximize its usage all along the value chain because we maximize life, we know we can have a good second life resources, then we control the temperature, so we maximize life and we can have a very good second life because we've we've been working very good conditions for the old first life.
00:31:14:01 - 00:31:22:20
Abigail Acton
Excellent. So it's beyond the notion of simply just recycling, but you are actually releasing them back into the system to be used again and again. Very good. Yeah.
00:31:22:20 - 00:31:45:17
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
When they are at the very end of their life there are designed to be dismantled easily, safely. That is to say we have competitors who are, you know, gluing all cells into form, which is then very difficult to dismantle or disconnect them or batteries are meant to be very easily dismantled. And what cannot be dismantled can go into a classical crusher for recycling.
00:31:45:21 - 00:31:56:13
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Yeah, that's excellent. Thank you. Thank you for continuing that. And I was also going to mention that, of course, the cooling must mean that you can use more superfast charging as well. Yeah, you must be able to charge more quickly.
00:31:56:13 - 00:31:58:12
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. Very fast. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:31:58:13 - 00:32:00:21
Abigail Acton
Excellent. Superb. Thank you. When you had a question. Yeah.
00:32:00:21 - 00:32:10:05
Juan J. Vilatela
I was interested in how you deal with different cell designs, because sometimes there are so many the shape changes that the dimensions, the voltage and so on. How do you deal with that?
00:32:10:07 - 00:32:33:01
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah. So we before funding what helps me and one of my partner, we designed a lot of batteries with cylindrical cells, prismatic cells, pouch cells and a lot of different type of cells. And when we decided to go for immersion cooling, we chose the cylindrical shape. So we are with standard cylindrical cells like 18, six, 50 or 2170.
00:32:33:04 - 00:33:00:07
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Why did we choose this is because we can have a very compact design and there is still a a natural distance between the cells where you can flow the liquid to cool them down. And since there are very little, it's harder for us to assemble and exchange of these to cool down. The chemistry is much wider. So we are much better at cooling small cells than at cooling big cells.
00:33:00:09 - 00:33:01:14
Abigail Acton
Bigger surface area.
00:33:01:16 - 00:33:23:02
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Yeah, because bigger surface area also in terms of safety, when there is a problem on one cell, it's it's it's not as big a problem as a problem on a big, big cell. So that's why we chose this format. But the technology is also possible to be done on on bigger cells. And the first research project we did at the CIA ten years ago was with prismatic rigid cells.
00:33:23:04 - 00:33:42:00
Abigail Acton
Super. I think that answers that very well. Well, I would like to make an observation to all of you. I didn't know very much. I think it's fairly obvious. I didn't know very much about batteries at all. And now I feel I know much more. And I'm also more interested in the subject than I was before I went down this road with you all.
00:33:42:02 - 00:33:51:07
Abigail Acton
And I will not be thinking so lightly every time I recharge my phone. It's good to know that there is new technology down the pipeline. Thank you so very much for your time.
00:33:51:07 - 00:33:53:08
Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin
Thank you. Thank you to all of you.
00:33:53:10 - 00:33:53:24
Pekka Peljo
Thank you.
00:33:54:01 - 00:33:56:08
Abigail Acton
You're very welcome. It was lovely to have you.
00:33:56:11 - 00:33:57:17
Juan J. Vilatela
Thank you. It was a pleasure.
00:33:57:19 - 00:34:20:11
Abigail Acton
Yes, indeed. Wasn't it? Thanks very much. One, if you've enjoyed this podcast and are interested in the latest scientific research coming out to the EU, have a listen to previous episodes. Follow us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and check out the podcast homepage on the Cordis website. We've looked at how I can help beekeepers and instant on the skin tests for TB.
00:34:20:13 - 00:34:47:00
Abigail Acton
In our last 29 episodes. There'll be something there to tweak your curiosity. Perhaps you're interested about what other EU funded projects are doing to innovate battery design. The CORDIS website will give you an insight into the results of projects funded Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe that are working in this area. The website has articles and interviews that explore the results of research being conducted in a very broad range of domains and subjects, from string theory to political theory.
00:34:47:02 - 00:35:08:05
Abigail Acton
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Off road equipment, used in construction and other sectors, is still very heavily reliant on diesel. The cost of downtime to recharge current electric batteries puts off industrial consumers. As does the short life of the batteries which then need to be replaced. In many ways, battery technology hasn’t developed to keep pace with our growing need for portable power. We need storage devices that can balance out the intermittent power produced by renewable energy sources and our demand. We have to identify viable, novel materials to make a new generation of batteries in order to get around bottlenecks in lithium supply – set to get even worse as demand for electric vehicles takes off. A whole new generation of cooling systems could speed up recharging time and prolong battery life. While paper-thin sheets of silicon with great conductive power could be a new boost to electric vehicle uptake. This episode is looking at breakthroughs in battery design that could affect all of us, supported by EU research funding. Our guests are here to recharge our interest in batteries, something we generally take for granted. Juan J. Vilatela leads a research group at IMDEA Materials in Madrid. His scientific career is focused on methods for synthesis and assembly of 1D nanomaterials into macroscopic nanotextiles for energy and structural applications, which he explored through the SyNERGY project. Pekka Peljo is associate professor of Materials Engineering at the University of Turku, Finland. He is interested in accelerating the development of the stationary electricity storage technologies for storing wind and solar power, but also in fundamental electrochemistry. His CompBat project developed machine learning tools to identify alternative materials for next-generation batteries. Matthieu Desbois-Renaudin is president and one of the co-founders of WATTALPS. He has dedicated his career to optimising energy consumption and emissions in mobile applications, firstly focusing on hybrid cars, and then on all kinds of vehicles and machines. His interests lie in electrification, batteries and their optimisation, including the patented cooling technology developed with the help of the WATTELSE project.
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Keywords
CORDIScovery, CORDIS, SiNERGY, CompBat, WATTELSE, batteries, alternative materials, machine learning, silicon, renewable energy