Battery/Supercapacitor Hybrids for Transport Energy Storage

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This proposal seeks a step change in our current knowledge as it pertains to energy storage for the transport sector. As is well known, the transport sector accounts for a quarter of all UK CO2 emissions. Diminishing that burden means improving the way that we build and power vehicles, and also compels us to convert to electrified systems. The final form of an ideal electric vehicle is impossible to predict, but it could well be a hybrid, a plug-in hybrid, or some form of hydrogen powered system.Regardless of the final engineering design, there is a growing conviction among scientists that the best prospect for long-term energy security will emerge from the matrix of possibilities connected with the storage and utlization of energy as electrochemical potential. Indeed, the idea of creating artificial systems to exploit electrochemical potential crops up every time there is an escalation in the price of oil. In our view this is the only possible method of ending the present era of profligate fossil fuel consumption, other than adopting nuclear power on an unprecedented scale. This is a global problem that grows more important on a daily basis, and it will soon become the dominant scientific issue in the world.Artificial methods of storing and/or generating electrochemical potential energy include batteries, fuel cells, supercapacitors, and electrolysis cells. Natural methods of exploiting electrochemical potential include biomass reactors and photosystem II (i.e. photosynthesis in plants and cyanobacteria). Almost incredibly, however, there is a dearth of general theory underpinning the transport and storage of electrical charge in all of these stystems, and there is no known method of optimizing the use of such systems on a local or global scale. Accordingly, in the current proposal, we seek to develop such theory independent of microscopic choices of materials and devices. We also intend to explore and develop hybrid battery/supercapacitor technologies suitable for electric vehicle use. Ultimately, we envision a hybrid battery/supercapacitor design that is cost-effective, safe, and scalable. At the same time, the requisite skills in both science and engineering will be passed along to a new generation of researchers.The proposed project involves the co-operation of the disciplines of Chemistry and Automotive Engineering. Under Chemistry, the activities will involve the development of room temperature ionic liquids as electrolytes for battery supercapacitor hybrid devices (BSHDs), and the trialling of advanced materials (e.g. PVDF-based polymers, porous carbons) and the development of relevant manufacturing methodologies (e.g. screen printing). In addition, the bench-scale testing of BSHD's by electrochemists will be used as part of a factorial design of materials to optimize various battery/supercapacitor designs ahead of scale-up. The BSHD technology coming from Chemistry will then form the basis of research in the Engineering laboratory. From the automotive engineering point of view, the use of BSHDs offers the advantages of batteries, which are relatively high energy density, with the advantages of supercapacitors, which are relatively high power density. We envision that these mutual advantages will be obtainable without any increase in the complexity of the vehicle control system that today accompanies the dual use of battery packs and supercapacitor packs. Finally, a combination of vehicle and BSHD modelling will enable a quantitative evaluation of the vehicle benefits of the BSHD technology. The results will validate the models and increase confidence in the results obtained therefrom.