'Electrochemical energy storage : from materials research to battery modeling'

Portable energy plays a crucial role in our modern society. The use of wireless electronic equipment, such as, mobile phones, laptop computers and other consumer electronics has been rapidly growing during the last two decades and this growth becomes even more pronounced in the near future. In addition, there is a strong tendency that "portability" will, on the one hand, broaden towards very small applications like wireless Autonomous Devices and medical implants and, on the other hand, to very large applications like (Hybrid) Electrical Vehicles. Some people therefore declared the 21st century already as "The Portable Age". The group Energy Materials and Devices (EMD) at the Eindhoven University of Technology deals with energy conversion processes in general and more particularly with: (i) Hydrogen storage, enabling the future hydrogen economy; (ii) Electricity storage in rechargeable batteries serving applications, such as small autonomous sensing devices enabling Ambient Intelligence and medical implants, and large scale applications in, for example, back-up power in future Smart Grids and electrical (hybrid) vehicles (EV's and HEV's) and (iii) Spectral conversion materials facilitating more efficient photovoltaic conversion processes. Electrochemistry is the carrying scientific discipline as it forms an essential part for the conversion processes of chemical species into electricity and vice versa. In this presentation the focus will be on Hydrogen and Lithium storage. This includes (i) Fundamental materials research; (ii) Introduction of new energy conversion/storage technologies; (iii) Mathematical modeling of these conversion/storage devices and (iv) Based on the insight generated by these models, new algorithms can be designed, such as safe fast charging algorithms and advanced Battery Management Systems (BMS) to be applied in e.g. future autonomous devices and automotive (H)EV’s. The underlying principles of the various energy storage concepts will be outlined.