TransForum Vol. 9, No. 2

Energy Frontier Research Centers Promise Advances in Transportation Technologies

The solid-electrolyte interface is a critical component in electrochemical energy storage. Because of the high reactivity between the electrolyte and the electrodes at the SEI interface, Li-ion batteries show limited calendar and cycle life--less than two years, which is much lower than the 15 years required for enabling this technology in vehicles.

The platinum particle is interacting with a molecule of propanol. The propanol is a gas phase surrogate for the heavier cellulose materials that are the focus of one of Argonne’s Energy Frontier Research Centers, the Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science recently awarded Argonne two Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs). With these awards comes the possibility for important discoveries in advanced transportation technology. The Centers, each funded at $19 million over five years, will work with partnering universities to advance basic science in electrochemical energy storage and in catalysis. DOE established the EFRCs as a means to enlist the talents and skills of the very best American scientists and engineers to address current fundamental scientific roadblocks to U.S. energy security.

Center for Electrical Energy Storage

The Center for Electrical Energy Storage (CEES) will explore the challenges that have limited the advancement and use of electrochemical energy storage (EES) technologies, including batteries and supercapacitors for transportation, residential, and commercial use. Although EES devices have been available for many decades, there are fundamental gaps in understanding the atomic- and molecular-level processes that govern their operation, performance limitations and failure. With a full understanding of these processes, new concepts can be formulated for addressing present EES technology gaps and meeting future energy storage requirements.

Under the leadership of Argonne’s Michael Thackeray, the CEES brings together 17 scientists from Argonne, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University. “CEES’ main goal,” Thackeray said, “is to gain a fundamental understanding of the interfacial phenomena that control electrochemical processes in electrical energy storage devices. This understanding will lay the foundation for the synthesis and design of electrode and electrolyte architectures that will lead to the discovery of future generations of energy storage materials and enable the development of batteries with enhanced capacity, power, safety and longevity.”

The Center’s emphasis is on lithium batteries since they provide the best opportunity for greater-than-incremental advances.

Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations

The Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) will address key catalytic conversions that could improve the efficiency of fuel production from coal and biomass, the two main chemical energy resources in the United States.

The U.S. could grow and convert enough biomass to replace nearly a third of the nation’s current gasoline use. However, a technology for economically converting biomass into widely usable fuels does not exist; the fundamental science needed to develop such a technology is still in its infancy. The challenge is to understand the chemistry involved in converting cellulose- and lignin-derived molecules to fuels and to use that knowledge to identify the needed catalysts.

To obtain energy densities similar to those of currently used fuels, the products of biomass conversion must have oxygen contents lower than that of biomass. Oxygen must be removed by using hydrogen to minimize the yield of carbon dioxide as a byproduct. This important chemistry is a unifying theme of IACT’s research.

“Catalysts found in nature demonstrate how amazingly efficient and selective catalysts can be,” said Argonne chemist Christopher Marshall, principal investigator and IACT director. “The Institute’s aim is to achieve the type of control and efficiency of chemical conversions that are found in nature.

New catalytic materials will be needed and a major emphasis of IACT is to synthesize new, complex, multisite and multifunctional catalytic materials that offer new models for catalysis. Using advanced computation and modeling to interpret, understand and optimize experimental results is also a critical part of advancing catalytic science. Advanced characterization techniques and catalytic experimentation will be employed, as well.

Argonne’s partners in IACT are Northwestern University, Purdue University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. IACT Director Marshall will be assisted by Deputy Director Peter Stair, who has a joint appointment with Northwestern University and Argonne.

Scientists for CEES and IACT will use the research facilities of each partnering organization, including Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source, Center for Nanoscale Materials and the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility. The CEES also will use the resources of Argonne’s Applied Battery Research and Development Program.

More

• Read more about Argonne’s EFRC awards
  

October 2009