PFI-RP: Developing Cost Effective, Safe, and Sustainable Batteries for Grid Energy Storage

这个创新研究伙伴关系（PFI-RP）项目的更广泛的影响和商业潜力是为美国的大规模电网储能开发一种成本效益高、安全和可持续的技术。如果成功，该项目将极大地提高电网对电力需求/供应波动的恢复能力，以及对火灾和飓风等自然灾害的恢复能力，这些自然灾害可能会削弱当今的基础设施。该项目将通过校企联合研发，加速对下一代电池储能设备的技术理解。可负担且安全的储能商业化将使电力直接进入人们的生活，在每个家庭、社区、城市和远离电网的地方都有储能，从而减少输电损失，降低纳税人的成本。增加小企业伙伴关系将产生积极的经济影响。由于产品制造对熟练劳动力的需求，商业化将产生新的能源相关工作机会。在这一领域接受培训的工人将获得与快速发展的能源工业相关的持久技能。与美国在未来几十年扩大能源基础设施的目标一致，分布式储能系统的持续扩张和部署将确保传统行业面临就业不确定性的社区获得持续的经济机会和就业机会。该项目旨在开发并商业化钠基全固态电池。虽然今天的固定电力存储主要由锂离子电池主导，但它们可能不安全、昂贵且不可持续，无法继续普遍采用。在这个项目中，钠全固态电池可能是一种替代方案，在体积能量和功率密度上与当今的电池相匹配，并且安全性更高。钠基电池可以在很宽的温度范围内工作，因为它们使用无机不可燃固体电解质，减轻了火灾风险。此外，钠全固态电池由于使用了大量的钠，省去了昂贵的元素，成本要低得多。该项目将探索构建1 Ah原型电池的基本策略，该电池具有600 Wh/L的高体积能量密度，并在1000次循环中实现80%的容量保留。制造成本将以80美元/千瓦时为目标进行建模。这些目标通过四个主要任务来实现：1)设计满足关键性能指标的新材料和结构；2)开发支持未来大批量生产所需材料的可扩展制造；3)建模生产流程，优化设计的经济可行性；4)评估和测试满足项目中设定的目标度量的原型。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation – Research Partnerships (PFI-RP) project is to develop a cost effective, safe, and sustainable technology for large scale grid energy storage in the U.S. If successful, the project will dramatically improve the grid’s resilience toward electricity demand/supply fluctuations as well as against natural disasters such as fires and hurricanes that can cripple today’s infrastructure. The project will accelerate the technological understanding of next generation battery energy storage devices, through university-industry joint research and development. Commercialization of affordable and safe energy storage will place power directly into people’s lives, with storage in every home, community, city and locations far from the grid, reducing transmission losses and lowering costs for ratepayers. Positive economic impact will be created from increased small-business partnerships. Due to skilled labor requirements in product manufacturing, commercialization will generate new energy-related job opportunities. Workers trained in this field will gain lasting skills relevant to the rapidly growing energy industry. In line with the U.S. goal to expand energy infrastructure over the next few decades, continued expansion and deployment of distributed energy storage systems would ensure sustained economic opportunities and employment for communities facing employment uncertainties in traditional industries.The project seeks to develop and commercialize a sodium-based all solid-state battery. While today’s stationary electrical storage is dominated by lithium ion batteries, they can be unsafe, costly and unsustainable for continued ubiquitous adoption. In this project, sodium all solid-state batteries may be an alternative, matching today’s batteries in volumetric energy and power density, with improved safety. Sodium-based batters may be able to operate over wide temperature ranges, owing to their use of inorganic non-flammable solid electrolytes alleviating fire hazards risks. Moreover, sodium all solid-state batteries offer much lower costs from the use of highly abundant sodium, eliminating expensive elements. This project will explore fundamental strategies to build a 1 Ah prototype battery with high volumetric energy densities of 600 Wh/L and achieve 80% capacity retention over 1000 cycles. Fabrication costs will be modelled with a target of $80/kWh. These goals are achieved through four major tasks: 1) Design new materials and structures that meet key performance metrics; 2) Develop scalable manufacturing of materials needed to support future large volume fabrication; 3) Modelling production workflow to optimize economic viability of designs; and 4) Evaluation and testing of prototypes that meet target metrics set in the project.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.