5th Battery and Energy Storage Conference Session 2: Transportation Electrification

Thursday, November 16 9:00AM-12:30PM CDT at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, IL

This session will feature research, industry trends, and strategies for moving away from fossil-fueled vehicles to electric cars, trucks, and public transit. Learn about current and future innovations and lessions learned in this session featuring leaders in the field.

Read more about this session's speakers below:

9:00AM-12:30PM: Transportation Electrification

9:00-9:30AM: "Outlook for battery-powered flight"

Venkat Viswanathan, Associate Professor, University of Michigan

We will discuss the performance metrics needed of batteries for electric land and air vehicles, and assess the energy-efficiency of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft compared to ground vehicles. Identifying the challenging but achievable battery performance requirements for eVTOL, we will discuss progress on Li metal batteries for eVTOLs. Following this, we will discuss the requirements and challenges for all-electric battery-powered single and twin-aisle aircraft

9:30-10:00AM: "An Integrated Science and Engineering Approach for Next-Generation EV Battery Materials and Technologies"

Jie Xiao, Battelle Fellow, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)

Identifying and addressing material challenges at industry-relevant scales and validation of new battery chemistries under realistic conditions critically determine the timeliness and success of materials development, manufacturing, and technology translation from academic research to industry applications in the US. There remains to be a large gap between academic research, materials scale-up/manufacturing, and device level performance optimization.

This talk will review the challenges, opportunities, and approaches for accelerating R&D and manufacturing processes of next generation materials and battery technologies. I will highlight the importance of interdisciplinary research in electrochemical energy storage and emphasize the necessity to identify and address scientific challenges at relevant scales/conditions.  Two specific examples will be discussed: (1) an integrated electrochemistry and engineering approach to utilize lithium metal anode and enable high-energy rechargeable lithium metal battery, (2) the study of single crystal Ni-rich cathode for Li-ion and Li metal batteries. Scaling up single crystal cathode will be used as an example to shed some light on the importance of integrated science and engineering methodology for battery materials development and manufacturing.

10:00-10:30AM: "Material solutions for future electrification: Role of advancements in electrolytes"

Rana Mohtadi, Senior Principal Scientist, Toyota Research Institute of North America

Enabling effective elimination of carbon dioxide footprints requires the availability of a variety of innovative energy storage and conversion technologies. At the heart of this lies the design of novel materials and the discoveries of unexpected properties.  Herein, I will discuss our research efforts conducted in the field of beyond Li-ion battery electrolytes and how they offer a pathway to overcoming long lasting challenges facing these technologies.

10:50-11:20AM: "Li-S Cell Development and Manufacturing at Lyten"

Celina Mikolajczak, Chief Battery Technical Officer, Lyten

11:20-11:50AM: "Advanced Diagnostic Tools for Lithium Metal and Solid State Batteries"

Shirley Meng, Chief Scientist & Professor, ACCESS at Argonne National Lab & Laboratory for Energy Storage & Conversion at The University of Chicago

Lithium (Li) metal has been considered as an ideal anode for high-energy rechargeable Li batteries while Li nucleation and growth at the nano scale remains mysterious as to achieving reversible stripping and deposition. A few decades of research have been dedicated to this topic and we have seen breakthroughs in novel electrolytes in the last few years, where the efficiency of lithium deposition is exceeding 99%. Here, cryogenic-transmission electron microscopy (Cryo-TEM/Cryo-FIB) was used to reveal the evolving nanostructure of Li deposits at various transient states in the nucleation and growth process, in which a disorder-order phase transition was observed as a function of current density and deposition time. More importantly, the complementary techniques such as titration gas chromatography (TGC) reveals the important insights about the phase fraction of solid electrolyte interphases (SEI) and electrochemical deposited Li (EDLi). While cryo-EM has made significant contributions to enabling lithium metal anodes for batteries, its applications in the area of solid state electrolytes, thick sulfur cathodes are still in its infancy, therefore, I will discuss a few new perspectives about how future cryogenic imaging and spectroscopic techniques can accelerate the innovation of novel energy storage materials and architectures.  

11:30-11:50AM: "Charging Ahead/All Charged up: New Technology Goes the Extra Mile for Extreme-Fast Charging of Electric Vehicles"

Zhijia Du, Research Staff, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Electrification and Energy Infrastructures Division

Realizing extreme fast charging (XFC) in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles is still challenging due to the insufficient lithium-ion transport kinetics, especially in the electrolyte. Herein, a novel high-performance electrolyte consisting of lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide (LiFSI), lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) and carbonates is proposed and tested in pilot-scale, 2-Ah pouch cells. Moreover, the origin of improved electrochemical performance is comprehensively studied via various characterizations, suggesting that the proposed electrolyte exhibits high ionic conductivity and excellent electrochemical stability at high charging rate of 6-C. Therefore, the high performance electrolyte filled pouch cells deliver improved discharge specific capacity and excellent long-term cyclability up to 1500 cycles under XFC conditions, which is superior to the conventional state-of-the-art baseline electrolyte.

11:50AM-12:10PM: "Safe, Scalable Lithium-Metal Battery Cells for Electric Vehicles" -might switch presenter to Krishna Iyer, Director of Process Engineering at Natrion

Krishna Iyer, Director of Process Engineering, Natrion

Lithium-metal battery (LMB) development can enable energy-dense electric vehicle (EV) battery packs. Recent work has indicated that solid electrolyte interphase formation and dendrite growth may be controlled or mitigated with effective electrolyte design to achieve commercially relevant cycle life in LMBs. However, concerns linger over LMBs’ reliance on stack pressure to accomplish high plating/stripping reversibility. Furthermore, the safety of LMB chemistries — even those that use solid-state electrolytes (SSEs) — remains unclear as more is learned about the extent of lithium metal’s reactivity. Natrion has developed a new electrolyte system employing the company’s Lithium Solid Ionic Composite (LISIC) SSE separator and M3 liquid wetting agent. LISIC is a polymer-ceramic hybrid SSE that can be manufactured into separators as thin as 16μm. Natrion has demonstrated these separators to be compatible with industrial “Z-folding” processes of assembling multilayer pouch cells at high throughput. Meanwhile, M3 facilitates wetting of the cathode and anode with just a single liquid electrolyte injection step. Natrion has shown that two-layer pouch cells made with off-the-shelf LiNi0.8Mn0.1Co0.1O2 (NMC811) cathode and 6.5μm-thick anode can deliver >300 cycles of cycle life at commercially-relevant C-rates at room temperature with no external stack pressure. Furthermore, the two-layer cells never entered into thermal runaway during accelerating rate calorimetry (ARC) experiments — even at the experiments’ ceiling of 250°C. Natrion’s LISIC/M3 electrolyte system thus holds promise to enable the high-volume construction of LMBs displaying high stability and longevity. 

12:10-12:30PM:  "Design Considerations, Analysis, and Development of a Battery System for a Solar-Powered High-Altitude Long-Endurance (HALE) Aircraft"

Craig Mascarenhas, SEAS, Harvard University

Solar-powered high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) electric aviation has become increasingly more feasible due to the advancement of various technologies, including that of energy storage. For the feasibility of such an aircraft, the gravimetric energy density of the battery system may be the single most important parameter in the design space. Our multi-disciplinary optimization (MDO) tool is used to design the aircraft displays mission and aircraft capabilities based on available system inputs and constraints. We explore the importance of battery system performance parameters in the design phase of these HALE aircraft. Our investigation demonstrates the importance of battery capabilities for the success of the field of HALE aircraft through a number of feasibility analyses explored here. Finally, we also investigate an example aircraft battery subsystem development, from the conceptual design phase through to testing and data analysis. A month-long flight test is conducted at simulated stratospheric conditions under the charge-and-discharge power profile expected on our HALE aircraft. The batteries were cycled with the expected diurnal solar charge and power discharge curves based on our design models that accounted for solar cell coverage as well as required propulsion power for flight. The battery-under-test (BUT) was confined within an environmental chamber that simulated the expected stratospheric conditions of the HALE flight, i.e. the low ambient temperature and pressure at 60,000 feet altitude. Following the test, extensive data analysis led to the performance characterization, which demonstrated a 1% capacity fade under standard temperature and pressure (STP) conditions. The pack energy density over-performed the rated specifications under the conditions of stratospheric flight.