The Chemical engineer feature: Powering the future
“LITHIUM-ION battery storage goes hand-in-hand with renewable energy, but these batteries are extremely difficult to repurpose or recycle, creating a huge waste problem.” Dr Amrit Chandan highlights the challenges of the industry and the benefits of the Aceleron technology.
Amrit Chandan speaking at the Global Grand Challenges Summit in London, September 2019. Credit: Rob Lacey
The article by Amanda Doyle titled “Powering the future: the lithium battery that doesn’t get thrown away” is an interview with Aceleron’s CEO Dr Amrit Chandan that discusses the industry challenges, the triggers for our founders to “leave their jobs” and set up Aceleron and the benefits of our technology.
Aceleron has developed a compression-based approach to assembling the batteries, using fasteners to connect the parts and complete the circuit. “It’s almost like a sandwich,” said Chandan. “We have a bottom tray with embedded electronics and connecting parts, we have our cells, and we have the reverse of the bottom tray.”
This makes the batteries easy to disassemble and to replace parts when needed. The design also had the unexpected but welcome result of making the batteries safer. Typically, if one cell in a battery starts to overheat, the whole pack can ignite or explode due to the close proximity of the cells and the amount of energy being compressed into a small volume. “We’re spacing cells apart a bit more but also we have protection on every single cell and also if a single cell does experience some kind of failure then the compression usually gives out first, which breaks the circuit and it helps to calm the situation down. We didn’t realise that at the start.”
Read the full article here: https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/features/powering-the-future-the-lithium-battery-that-doesn-t-get-thrown-away/
