Project Manager Craig Chapling outlines the progress being made on the three characterisation projects announced in July. He also summarises the three "sprint" projects being formed to address specific short-term industry research needs.
Battery Characterisation Projects
All three characterisation projects are now up and running and are starting to perform experiments alongside completing the usual start up activities. Nigel Browning’s group ran a successful event at Diamond Light Source on 26th September, with approximately 50 attendees across academia and industry. In Cambridge, all PDRAs are in place for the project being led by Siân Dutton and they are starting experimental and fabrication activities. The project is currently procuring equipment upgrades to support their TriScat work (time-resolved super-resolution interferometric light scattering microscopy). Rob Weatherup’s team is having its first set of test hardware fabricated in Manchester, alongside some modifications to a Diamond beamline to accept it. Rob has recently moved to the University of Oxford, and the grant for this battery characterisation project is being transferred with him.
The leaders of all these projects are all planning to run dissemination or collaboration events to share the new techniques they are developing. We will advertise these opportunities for input at the appropriate time.
“Sprint” Projects
Three "sprint” projects have recently been created to answer specific research questions defined by industry, using the capabilities of the Faraday Institution community. These are relatively small grants or extensions to existing projects, intended to rapidly provide answers to issues being seen in commercial applications, and which can be evaluated by the industrial partner. The projects are all at the early setup stages.
The first is evaluating the accelerated degradation of high nickel chemistries under certain storage conditions. The project team is currently procuring equipment and preparing cells for storage. The second is characterising the off gases from cells under abuse conditions and evaluating their flammability or detonation behaviour to inform pack design. The third aims to improve thermal interface materials to better manage temperatures at a pack level, and potentially reduce the size of required cooling systems. The hope is that these projects will be up and running in the next month.
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