We want to make sure that the materials we use for anodes and cathodes for all future battery chemistries are as sustainable as possible. Currently, we focus on the production of materials from two main feedstocks: biomass and plastic waste. By employing waste as a resource and by prolonging the life cycle of energy-intensive materials such as plastic, we strive to decrease the net CO2 footprint and costs of our synthesis processes.
We use temperature and pressure to transform these carbon-rich waste feedstocks into carbons with disordered atomic structures (unlike diamond or graphite) that are incorporated into energy storage devices such as batteries, fuel cells and supercapacitors.
By controlling the treatment conditions inside the reactors, we can tailor the microstructure of our carbon materials to be more efficient for each specific application.
For example, for sodium-ion batteries, we produce ‘hard carbons’ that consist of disordered graphitic domains where the sodium ions are stored predominantly in the pores between graphitic domains. We produce these materials from derivatives of sugar, for example, glucose.
Another interesting material we can produce is carbon fibre made from lignin, an abundant forestry waste material that many researchers around the world are trying to valorise. We use an electric field to aid the formation of nanofibres of lignin through a process called electrospinning. The spun fibres are deposited in such a way to form a non-woven fabric. We use a thermal treatment to convert the lignin fibres into carbon (>800 °C) and then use these free-standing mats as electrodes for energy storage in supercapacitors or lithium-sulfur batteries.
For plastic waste, we have very recently patented a method to produce long-lasting and high-capacity anode materials for sodium-ion batteries by using PET bottles and a tin organometallic precursor. Through a one-step synthesis process, we obtain a composite material that outperforms the current graphite/hard carbon anodes used in lithium- or sodium-ion batteries.
Please get in touch if you want to collaborate on any of these projects!