Electrolytic Processes

PREDICTOR is a research and training project funded by the European Union’s Marie-Sklodowska-Curie programme. It involves 7 partners and 15 associated partners from 11 different countries, who will recruit 17 PhD students for the project (2 for Aalto)

PREDICTOR aims to establish a rapid, high-throughput method to identify and develop materials for electrochemical energy storage. It will enable the rapid identification, synthesis and characterization of materials within a coherent development chain, replacing conventional trial-and-error developments. To validate the PREDICTOR system, the case study will be active materials and electrolytes for redox-flow batteries. Within the project, three demonstrator battery cells (TRL3-4) will be assembled and tested with the newly developed materials.

The DualFlow project will introduce a radically new energy conversion and storage concept. The breakthrough idea involves combining battery storage, hydrogen generation and production of useful chemicals into a single hybrid system using water-soluble redox mediators as energy transfer vectors. The system will be used for storing electricity or for converting renewable energy into hydrogen and value-added chemicals. The energy conversion operation will be realised by pumping charged electrolytes through reactors. For hydrogen production, the reactor will be filled with particles to catalyse electron transfer and hydrogen evolution. Ultimately, the production of value-added chemicals will be enabled by a reactor comprising a biphasic system.

Funded by the European Union (2022–2026)

The Bi3BoostFlowBat project will develop cost-efficient batteries featuring low cost, optimal redox potential and high solubility. The project plans to achieve this by introducing several strategies, including utilization of solid boosters, bio-inspired materials, biphasic systems and bipolar membranes, to find the best compounds that will lead to the desired results.

Funded by the European Union (2021–2026)

Recently, there has also been significant interest in thermal decomposition of methane to elemental carbon and hydrogen. This approach requires much less energy than water electrolysis, and could be CO2 neutral if there are no methane leaks and the produced carbon is utilized in applications where it is not finally released to the atmosphere. This is an interesting approach as it could solve the problem of countries having huge natural gas reserves to be tempted to extract and burn the methane for energy. Sustainability of the approach is slightly questionable, but conversion of methane to hydrogen and long lasting carbon products would be much better option than burning of methane for energy. Electrochemistry could offer alternative approaches to produce hydrogen from natural gas. Interestingly, electrocatalytic hydrocarbon oxidation has not received much attention, so we will focus on investigating if electrochemical approach could be an option for pyrolysis.

This project is funded by Research Council of Finland

This project funded by Academy of Finland focuses on demonstrating the concept of solid boosters for flow batteries, as well as developing tools to characterize charge transfer with the solid boosters. 

BioFlow-project develops safe and sustainable flow batteries for large-scale energy storage, based on bio-inspired organic molecules, in collaboration with Prof. Petri Pihko, University of Jyväskylä. This project is funded by Academy of Finland.

PhysElectrochemPhys is coordinating this EU-project. CompBat will focus on developing tools for discovery of new prospective candidates for next generation flow batteries, based on machine learning assisted high-throughput screening. Density functional theory calculations will be used to obtain data on solubilities and redox potentials of different molecules, and machine learning methods are used to develop high-throughput screening tools based on the obtained data. The results of the high-throughput screening are validated with experimental results. Target molecules will be bio-inspired organic compounds, as well as derivatives of the redox active specialty chemical already manufactured in bulk quantities. Stability and reversibility of the molecules will also be investigated by DFT calculation, experimental investigations and machine learning methods, for a selected group of interesting molecules.

Numerical modelling of flow battery systems will be performed with finite element method, and with more general zero-dimensional models based on mass-transfer coefficients. The models will be verified experimentally, and the modelling will generate a data-set to allow prediction of the flow battery cell performance based on properties of the prospective candidates obtained from high-throughput screening. This data is used then to predict the flow battery system performance from the stack level modelling. Freely available cost estimation tools are then adapted to estimate the system performance also in terms of cost. This approach will allow prediction of the battery performance from molecular structure to cost.

Furthermore, the concept of using solid boosters to enhance the battery capacity will be investigated by developing models to simulate the performance of such a systems, and validating the models experimentally with the candidates already reported in the literature.

Partners: Dr. Imre Papai (Természettudományi Kutatóközpont, Hungary), Prof. Kari Laasonen (Aalto University, Finland), Prof. Daniel Brandell (Uppsala Universitet, Sweden), Prof. Umberto Desideri (Universitá di Pisa, Italy), Prof. Keith Stevenson (Skolkova Institute of Science and Technology, Russia) and Prof. Petri Pihko (University of Jyväskylä, Finland)

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Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation awarded us a homing grant in 2019 to help to improve the research infrastructure in our lab. We will use this grant to improve our flow battery testing systems, and to build a scanning electrochemical microscope.

This  project will develop digital technology enablers based on advanced computational modelling and machine learning to screen prospective molecular candidates to realize scalable, inexpensive and sustainable energy storage based on redox flow batteries, focusing on metal compexes. It is funded by the Future makers program of Technology Industries of Finland Centennial Foundation and Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation. The collaborators include Prof. Kari Laasonen (Aalto University) and Prof. Petri Pihko (University of Jyväskylä).

We are starting again some work on photoproduction of hydrogen at liquid-liquid interfaces! We will collaborate with Prof. Marcin Opallo (Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences), and Prof. Hubert Girault (EPFL), with our part focusing on development of photoelectrochemical flow cells for such systems. This project is funded from the  Solar-Driven Chemistry  network initiated by the German Research Foundation - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). From Finland the funding organization is Academy of Finland.