VERSATILE IONOMERS FOR DIVALENT CALCIUM BATTERIES
Transport, housing and industry increase Green House Gas emissions e.g. CO2, and adversely impacts on global warming. Both electric transportation and renewable energy should decrease or at least limit CO2 emissions. While fully decarbonized energy as nuclear electricity and hydroelectricity produce unceasing electricity, the intermittency of photovoltaic and wind-generated renewable electricity requires an efficient storage to smooth their production.
As for the electrification of vehicle fleets, it will progressively suppress urban pollution and then, depending on the well to wheel efficiency, more or less decrease the CO2 emissions. The worldwide sales of Li-ion batteries has significantly increased from 2000 reaching, in 2016, 90 GWh (gigawatt hours). The progressive banning of internal combustion engines should accelerate the market growth.
Improving energy management is vital for the future. It implies greener production ways and smarter conversion (Fuel Cells) and storage (battery, supercapacitors) electrochemical devices. Regarding electrochemical storage, lithium batteries, LiBs, have flooded the market of electronic devices and are now powering electric vehicles.
Title: VERSATILE IONOMERS FOR DIVALENT CALCIUM BATTERIES.
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Acronym: VIDICAT.
Project Reference: H2020 FET Open with number 828902 H2020-FETOPEN-2018-2019-2020-01 Proposal Number: 829145Goal: VIDICAT targets to develop a Calcium Battery, CaB, that is safe, performing, cheap and, at the same time, a sustainable technology.
Duration: 48 months (1/3/2019 – 28/2/2023).
Total Budget: 2.997M€ (Funded by the European Commission).
Partners: UC3M, KIT, CIDETEC, ERAS LABO, FZ-JÜELICH, UNIPD, UMONTPELLIER, CNRS.
Potential impact: electrochemical energy storage, sustainable Calcium batteries.
The huge energy storage-demand involves an explosion of the battery production, which will face in the future the problem of the limited resources in lithium ores, furthermore unlocated in Europe. It is therefore mandatory, while improving LiBs, to investigate their plausible alternatives. Recent years have seen the emergence of post-LiB, like sodium, magnesium or calcium technologies.
Rechargeable calcium batteries, CaB, are very promising in terms of theoretical energy density, safety, and sustainability. Calcium, among the most abundant elements in the Earth crust, is present in European ores as limestone and gypsum and is not ranked by EU as a Critical Raw Material (CRM). Besides everyone has already seen stalactite caves as the picture of the French Palaeolithic “Grotte Chauvet”.
The very high melting temperature of calcium metal, Ca0, which exceeds 830 º C, as compared to 180 and 96 ºC for Li0 and Na0 respectively, is an indisputable safety asset for CaB. However, the lack of reliable electrolytes so far impedes the practical research on CaB. VIDICAT aims at developing new material concepts based on multifunctional electrolyte and electrode binder. Such approach will provide at the interface with Ca0, chemically, electrochemically and thermally stable electrolytes.
Due to outstanding mechanical performances, very thin electrolytes are targeted, with cationic conductance close to standard lithium ones. In the frame of developing this groundbreaking electrolyte concept, VIDICAT will also search for positive electrodes with the final challenging purpose of proposing reliable and safe CaB. VIDICAT objective is the achieving of a CaB prototype reaching energy density similar to State of Art LiB.
Multidisciplinary, VIDICAT will increase EU capacity building in low-carbon energy. Based on sustainable materials and approaches, VIDICAT will prevent the loss of non-renewable chemicals and paves the way for Europe energetic independence.
FETOPEN VIDICAT 