ISCF Wave 1: High Power Material Hybridised Battery (HiPoBat)

In general, batteries offer high energy density but low power density, with the disadvantage of running the risk of thermal runaway and fast ageing at high rates of operation. Supercapacitors, on the other hand, offer high power densities and theoretically millions of charge-discharge cycles but can store lower energy density than the batteries. The specifications of many HEV and EV power/energy storage systems and energy storage associated with the grid and renewables would be best satisfied by a battery-supercapacitor system. The supercapacitor would also prolong the battery lifetime and lower the risk of thermal runaway in batteries, as the supercapacitor would undertake the high current part of operation. However, the system of battery-supercapacitor connected in parallel suffers from the problem that while the voltage of the battery could remain constant for a long time of discharge, the voltage of supercapacitor falls linearly. This means that a DC/DC converter is needed which adds to weight, space, cost, complexity and lowers the efficiency. The HiPoBat project proposes a novel battery hybridised with high power electrode material at micro- and nano-level, with self-regulated voltage to a high and wide plateau, improved safety and prolonged lifetime. Innovative materials will be designed and manufactured in this project so that intelligent synergetic effects of high power and high energy material features raise both power and energy density above the sum of the individual components. HiPoBat cells will be fabricated and tested and will be subjected to many iterations of fine-tuning of material design and manufacture, also with the help of modelling and simulations. Finally, the technology will be scaled up to a large prismatic cell.
HiPoBat meets the ISCF objectives as follows:
OBJECTIVE 1: increased UK businesses' investment in R&D and improved R&D capability and capacity. IAG members have invested R&D funds in the project areas and will participate in cross-fertilisation of R&D ideas. Business staff secondment at UniS and training of PDRAs, PhD, MSc and UG project students in HiPoBat will contribute to a future business workforce trained in key areas of energy storage for EVs, HEVs and the grid.
OBJECTIVE 2: increased multi- and interdisciplinary research around the challenge areas. HiPoBat covers all scales from chemical groups, to micro-features of electrode coatings and cells to the macro-scale of cell and energy storage system. With the Chemistry and Materials/Chemical and Mechanical Engineering background of the Investigators, respectively, and multi-disciplinary backgrounds of the IAG and SUPERGEN Hub, HiPoBat fulfils the multi- and inter-disciplinary objective: it marries equivalent electric circuit, material, cell and energy storage system design with material synthesis and processing, cell fabrication and testing.
OBJECTIVE 3: increased business-academic engagement on innovation activities relating to the challenge areas. Such activities include staff exchanges and business staff secondment at UniS, collaboration in innovation activities, participation of business members at HiPoBat project meetings, SUPERGEN meetings and other Open Dissemination seminars, and business involvement in exploitation activities of the HiPoBat outcomes via participation in patent activity, cell scale up and future projects to advance the TRL level of HiPoBat.
OBJECTIVE 4: increased collaboration between younger, smaller companies and larger, more established companies up the value chain. To be realised by the IAG composition and the interdisciplinary nature of HiPoBat.
OBJECTIVE 5: increased overseas investment in R&D in the UK. HiPoBat is a follow on of the EC- funded project AUTOSUPERCAP and with our EC and international industrial and academic links, it is envisaged that it will lead to more EC- and internationally-funded projects including UK IAG members, with opportunities of overseas investment in UK business.

Our Research Vision is to develop a novel high power material hybridised battery through intelligent material design to maximise the synergetic effects of the high energy and high power material features so that the optimised design achieves higher performance than just the sum of the parts in terms of both power density (2-5 kW/kg) and energy density (100-180 Wh/kg) and a wide and high voltage plateau, as well as increased safety, cycling ability and lifetime. WP5 includes the fabrication and testing of a scaled up cell (Month 30-36) which is expected to accelerate industrial impact.

The application of our novel HiPoBat is aimed primarily towards the transport sector (EVs, xEVs and HEVs in terms of cars and buses) which is associated with CO2 and pollution reduction, as well as the energy storage in the grid which will maximise the renewables energy used and satisfy the demand profile. Hence, the impact of our project encompasses environmental, health and societal aspects. Furthermore, the novel HiPoBat will increase the safety of batteries and reduce the number of related-accidents. It will also prolong the battery lifetime, which means lower costs.

Our research project offers academic impact as our research will be used and elaborated by other academic groups to design and optimise new battery materials and devices. It offers enormous advantages to battery manufacturers and battery system manufacturers, as well as manufacturers of EVs, HEVs, xEVs, and energy storage plant manufacturers and grid operators. It will also open new avenues to material manufacturers to develop new businesses associated with our new materials and electrode materials. We shall have a wide range of industrial companies in our Industrial Advisory Group (IAG) across the full supply chain, so our research will have strong industrial impact. We shall also apply for patents and exploit the IPR through agreements with companies. We shall be part of the Supergen Energy Storage Hub and we also have close collaboration with NPL, which means we shall be able to disseminate our findings widely within the academic and industrial world. We shall also organise an Open Dissemination workshop in Month 25 of the project.