News & Events Archiv - Page 11 of 18 - Helmholtz-Institut Ulm

Efficient energy storage is required to buffer electricity from renewable sources or to provide electric cars with energy. A suitable technology for this could provide the magnesium battery in the future as it covered a number of attractive features. About 100 leading experts swapped ideas on the current status and the pending challenges for magnesium (Mg) as a battery raw material from 21 to 22 July 2016 at the symposium. It was held in conjunction with the Ulm Electrochemical Talks (UECT).

It was the first international symposium on magnesium batteries and it was aimed to discuss the latest state of research and to identify future scenarios. The presentations and posters at the symposium dealt with the topics electrolytes and additives, electrode interfaces, cathodes, anodes, modeling and systems.

Compared to lithium, magnesium may release and absorb two electrons, making it a very interesting material for battery research. Magnesium batteries are currently the most often researched candidates for lithium-free alternatives in the field of “high-voltage batteries” – not least because some automobile manufacturers invest in the research of magnesium batteries. The advantages are obvious: Magnesium is less reactive and thus less dangerous. During charging no dendrites grow with magnesium, which represents the main challenge to security in the use of lithium metal anodes. It is also cheaper to produce because it reacts less rapidly with air as lithium metal. Magnesium is available in large quantities, for instance in the form of rock dolomite, which results in lower prices. Magnesium batteries could be used as stationary energy storage, for example in wind turbines or solar panels.

As an international research institute we stand for an open, solidary and peaceful together. We condemn all forms of intolerance, xenophobia, racism and antisemitism. And we oppose all kinds of hate and violence.

At the Helmholtz Institute Ulm a team of scientists from around the world is researching. One third of the researchers are coming from other countries, many of them from non-EU countries. Also numerous visiting professors from different countries doing research and teach at our institute. Diversity of opinion and the international exchanges are the basis of our research and teaching activities. Our recent research success would not have been possible without this plurality. For us there are no differences in our employees and our guests from around the world – no matter what nationality, ethnicity, culture, religion or social class they belong to.

Dr. Fabienne Gschwind represented HIU at the boat trip on Lake Constance, the final event of the 66^th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. The traditional boat trip across Lake Constance was again hosted by the German Federal State of Baden-Württemberg. 29 Nobel Laureates and some 400 selected young scientists from 80 countries had spent the week in Lindau discussing central topics from the field of physics.

The boat trip on the MS Sonnenkönigin and the picnic on the meadows surrounding Mainau castle provided the delegates with a good opportunity for networking. An important topic of discussion was the climate change and renewable energy. In this context, particular attention was paid to the presentation of the innovative HIU battery research, which is an important key to the success of the energy transition and the electric mobility.

The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings have been hosted on the banks of Lake Constance every year since 1951. Once every year, 30–40 Nobel Laureates convene at Lindau to meet the next generation of leading scientists: undergraduates, PhD students, and post-doc researchers from all over the world. The Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings foster the exchange among scientists of different generations, cultures, and disciplines. The meetings focus alternately on physiology and medicine, on physics, and on chemistry – the three natural science Nobel Prize disciplines.

Stefano Passerini, deputy director of HIU, has been appointed as member of the board of the International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB). He is involved in the organisation of the IMLB 2020, which is going to take place in Berlin.

IMLB is the premier international conference on the state of lithium battery science and technology, as well as current and future applications in transportation, commercial, aerospace, biomedical, and other promising sectors. Currently IMLB 2016 takes place in Chicago and has drawn about 1,600 experts, researchers, and company representatives involved in the lithium battery field.

The meeting provides a forum to discuss recent progress in advanced lithium batteries for energy storage and conversion. It focuses on both basic and applied research findings that have led to improved Li battery materials, and to the understanding of the fundamental processes that determine and control electrochemical performance. A major (but not exclusive) theme of the meeting addresses recent advances in beyond lithium-ion technologies. The conference covers a wide range of topics relating to lithium battery science and technology.

On 17 June 2016, the HIU celebrated its fifth anniversary with around 100 guests. Professor Michael Weber, president of the University of Ulm, Professor Horst Hahn, founding director of HIU, Professor Maximilian Fichtner, director of the HIU and guest speaker Professor Jürgen Garche drew a very positive conclusion.

On 24 September 2010, the former presidents of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the University of Ulm, Professor Eberhard Umbach and Professor Karl Joachim Ebeling, and the coordinator of the HIU and later founding director Professor Horst Hahn submitted one out of three proposals for the funding and formation of the HIU to the Helmholtz Association. On 1 January 2011 the HIU was established as a center of excellence for battery research in a ceremony with the former Federal Research Minister Annette Schavan and the Baden-Württemberg Minister President Stefan Mappus.

In his address at the anniversary event University President Professor Weber stressed the great importance of electrochemistry for its university and underlined how much the University has benefited from the establishment of the HIU on the university campus in the last five years.

The establishment of the institute was quickly succeeded because of the existing expertise of the two founding partners and associated partners of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Center for Solar Energy and Hydrogen Research Baden-Württemberg (ZSW), Professor Hahn summed up. At the beginning 35 new positions were created, now 130 scientists working at the HIU. As a member of the Helmholtz Association, the HIU is financed with 90 percent by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and with 10 percent by the State of Baden-Württemberg. The base budget of HIU is 5.5 million euros per year.

In 2014, the HIU has been integrated as a regular institute in the program-oriented funding of the program “Storage and Cross-linked Infrastructures” (SCI), of the Helmholtz Association. In October of the same year the scientists moved into the new building, which annulled the spatial separation of the researchers who worked at various locations of the partners before.

Professor Fichtner praised the more than 300 scientific publications that have been released since the founding and at the same time wished further innovative ideas in battery research by his colleagues.

The researchers of the Helmholtz Institute Ulm met for a two-day biannual meeting to develop long-term planning and solutions and to break new ground. The aim of the meeting was to take time for future issues of battery research aside of the day-to-day business and to develop strategic considerations for the coming years and to strengthen cooperation within the HIU.

Director Maximilian Fichtner highlighted the particular shape of the HIU with its four partner institutions, which makes it possible to use the salient capabilities of the partners and to unite in the different research groups under the umbrella of the HIU. “The HIU is well integrated into the national and European research collaboration, HIU representatives are involved in decision-making processes in the fields of energy policy and in particular battery research and also parts of our work have gained international attention,” Fichtner took stock of the five-year anniversary of HIU.

The meeting was characterised by efforts to further involve young scientists in the discussion on the future direction. The four interdisciplinary research topics, so to speak, the core business of HIU, in which all groups are working together, have been subjected to a critical analysis and have been adjusted. Moreover, it has been agreed to count on an even closer cooperation between the research groups, especially between the theoretical modelers and experimenters, and to arrange the research direction even more dynamic to enable entirely new discoveries.

“With more than 300 publications in international databases, the HIU has so many research articles published in their subject area than any other institution in Germany”, the deputy director Stefano Passerini praised at the end of the meeting.

Tien Q. Duong (Department of Energy (DOE)), Khalil Amine, Michael Thackeray, Ira Bloom (Argonne National Lab), Marca Doeff (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) and Patricia Smith (U.S. Naval Research Lab) paid a visit to HIU to have further dialogue on project collaborations. Stefano Passerini, Maximilian Fichtner and Arnulf Latz warmly welcomed the U.S. researchers at the Institute. HIU already cooperates with research labs of the DOE in some projects. For instance, the 1st International Symposium on Magnesium Batteries in July 2016 is jointly organised by HIU and Argonne National Lab. After an exchange of information and a guided tour through the laboratories the guests presented all members of the scientific staff of HIU with their activities in energy storage research. Tien Q. Duong started with an overview of the Vehicle Technologies Office energy storage R&D program. Michael M. Thackeray gave a presentation on advances in structural design of cathodes for high energy Li-ion cells and Marca Doeff followed him with a presentation on the insights into the high voltage behavior of NMC cathodes. Ira Bloom finished the talks with his appraisal of battery testing and life estimation in the United States.

Still today, kerosene lamps and candles are the major source of light in many developing countries and wood stoves are common for cooking. Especially the use of kerosene causes particulate emissions which are hazardous to health while the use firewood leads to controlled and uncontrolled clearing with the well-known negative impacts for health and the environment. The use and storage of electricity generated from solar energy by photovoltaics is considered as one way to reduce the strong dependence on fossil and biogenic fuels.

For example, the number of stand-alone photovoltaic systems in the lower power range in combination with battery storage devices has increased in recent years in Africa and India. They are used for the operation of LED lamps and smaller electronic devices (mobile phone, laptop, LED TV). To date, especially the high storage costs are one of the reasons why appliances with higher power needs cannot be operated economically with these types of stand-alone systems. This mostly applies to developing regions where electricity should be provided at low cost. However, current research shows that storage costs could be considerably reduced in the future.

In order to use stand-alone photovoltaic systems and micro grids with energy storage systems for appliances with higher power needs, in developing countries a number of technical challenges have to be overcome and suitable battery systems have to be identified. The colleagues of ITAS and the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) defined the resulting research questions and the related need for research in this context. Their results were presented in a research report for the British Department for International Development (DfID).

Project description

A proposal led by HIU has been granted in the highly competitive round of the recent European Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open Call on “Novel ideas for radically new technologies”. Out of 822 proposals submitted the third and final cut-off of the H2020-FETOPEN-2014/2015 call 13 have been retained to prepare for grant agreements. The available budget of € 40 million set the stakes for excellent projects very high which is demonstrated by the fact that only 1.4% of Research and Innovation Actions (RIA) proposals can be funded. True to the non-prescriptive, cross-cutting nature of the call, the retained proposals are expected to foster international collaboration in a multitude of disciplines such as robotics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, information science, biology, artificial intelligence or chemistry.

The submitted HIU proposal outlines research on a new cathode material based on a new storage principle, as a result of which energy storage densities can be increased beyond those of systems known so far. The materials used so far are based on intercalation storage of lithium in small cavities (so-called interstitials), in a host structure that usually consists of metal oxides. This method works well, but the storage densities reached are limited, as lithium cannot be packed very densely in the structure. In addition, intercalation storage of more than one lithium ion per formula unit is generally not possible, as the structure then is no longer stable and collapses. It would therefore be desirable to increase the packing density of lithium in the stable structure and to exceed the upper limits reached so far. A team around Professor Maximilian Fichtner presented in this proposal a new storage principle and a material on this basis, which allows for the reversible storage of 1.8 Li per formula unit. With a material of the composition Li2VO2F, storage capacities of up to 420 mAh/g were measured at a mean voltage of 2.5 V. As a result of the comparably high density of the material, a storage capacity of up to 4600 Wh/L relative to the active material is obtained. Contrary to the materials used so far, the new system no longer stores lithium at the interstitials, but directly at the lattice sites of a cubic close packed structure. As a result, packing densities are increased significantly.

FET Open, a European Commission programme set up within the framework of Horizon 2020, funds projects on new ideas for radically new future technologies, at an early stage when there are few researchers working on a project topic. This can involve a wide range of new technological possibilities, inspired by cutting-edge science, unconventional collaborations or new research and innovation practices.

Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020) – in addition to the private investment that this money will attract. It promises more breakthroughs, discoveries and world-firsts by taking great ideas from the lab to the market.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers of HIU published a review of fluoride ion batteries, which are electrochemical cells in which a negative anion—fluoride—enables charge transport. The scientists Fabienne Gschwind, Gonzalo Rodriguez-Garcia, Dan Sandbeck, Axel Gross, Marcel Weil, Maximilian Fichtner and Nicolas Hörmann report, for the first time, an extensive theoretical screening of FIBs as well as an analysis of the safety and toxicity of electrochemical couples of such batteries. So far only a handful of publications exist on the topic of fluoride ion batteries. The article also review the research progress made in recent years in the areas of high-temperature and room-temperature fluoride ion batteries. Room-temperature fluoride ion batteries consisting of seven different cathode and nine different anode materials are screened at the end to further illustrate the potential and issues of such battery systems.