Title : Catalyst and support materials in energy storage systems
Abstract:
In order to provide the human kind energy but simultaneously mitigating the climate change the share of renewable energy production must be increased. To balance the intermittence renewable energy production, various different energy storage systems have been proposed such as lithium ion batteries and electrolysers. Additionally, also fuel cells that would convert the chemically stored energy back to electricity with high efficiency would come to the market. All of these before mentioned applications include scarce and/or very expensive metal materials. As their volume increase significantly, there is a concern where these critical elements required as their catalyst will be obtained and therefore, their recovery from the end of life devices is at high importance.
Currently, the catalysis research has been focusing on a design-for-performance approach where variety of exotic, high cost metal elements has favored. In addition, the research trend has been towards nanomaterials, alloys, hybrid materials and ultra-thin coatings to decrease the amount of these raw materials in each application. However, at the same time, their recovery becomes impossible and less economically feasible. This is contradictory with the aim for design-for-recycling where the selected raw materials are design in a way to facilitate their recovery at the end of life products. This speech addresses these phenomena, and how research community should address them while planning the new material solutions to the energy storage devices.
