Prof. Rachid Yazami
(Prof. Rachid Yazami, 2014’ Draper Price Award Laureate, Energy Research Institute, Nanyang Technological University – Singapore) wikipedia link
(Keynote Talk)
In the last decade lithium ion batteries (LIB) have become the market dominating electrical energy storage system in a wide range of applications including handheld mobile electronics, electro-mobility, smart grid and clean energy storage. Since their introduction in the early 90s, LIB have more than doubled in energy and power density, while their cost fell by over one order of magnitude. Accordingly, LIB should continue enjoy a 2-digit market expansion in the next decades.
However, the market demand may exceed what current LIB can afford especially in electro-mobility application where the driving range per charge should reach the level of current IC vehicles (~500 km/full tank) and the charging time should be reduced to 5-10 minutes versus up to current status typically of many hours/charge. Therefore, efforts have been focused on next generation batteries with two to three time higher energy and power densities than current. Such an increase requires either developing new anode, cathode and electrolyte materials with enhanced charge storage capabilities and rates or moving to new chemistries different from LIB.
In this presentation we will cover a few options for new chemistries, including liquid anode and liquid cathode concept together with fluoride ion batteries. Although these new chemistries are at the early stage of development they potentially offer game changing solutions in terms of convenience of use and range of improvements.
In addition to addressing the energy and power density issues, efforts are directed towards increasing the battery life by online control of charge and discharge profiles and parameters. The usual charging protocol consists of applying a constant current (cc) to defined voltage limit followed by a constant voltage (cv) at that end of charge limit. However, it has been recognized that the cc-cv protocol doesn’t provide the best operation lifespan of the battery and should be replaced by a smarter, non-linear protocol that takes into account the battery state of health (SOH).
We have developed a smart charging protocol in association with SOH determined by a new thermodynamics approach and the results show an improvement by a factor close to two of the battery life.
Biography of Prof. Rachid Yazami
Dr. Rachid Yazami, a native of Fez, Morocco, received his MS in electrochemistry and PhD in graphite intercalation compounds for lithium batteries at France’s Grenoble Institute of Technology, and then began his career at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), also in Grenoble, where he rose to research director. He has been a visiting associate in materials science and chemistry at Caltech, in collaboration with JPL/NASA, for 10 years, and in 2010 joined the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore as a visiting professor in materials science. His current research addresses lithium batteries and “beyond lithium” future battery technologies, including liquid anode alkali metal-air and fluoride-ion batteries.
He is a founder of CFX battery, Inc. (now Contour Energy Systems), a primary and rechargeable lithium and fluoride battery start-up in Azusa, California; director of energy storage programs at the Energy Research Institute; and principal investigator of battery research at the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) Center for Electromobility, jointly managed by NTU and the Technological University of Munich. In 2011 he founded KVI PTE, Ltd., a start-up in Singapore dedicated to battery life and safety enhancement for mobile electronics, large energy storage, and electric vehicle applications.
In 1979–1980 Yazami invented the lithium graphite anode, now used in commercial Li-ion batteries, a $15 billion/year business. He is listed as inventor on more than 70 patents related to battery technology, including nano-Si- and nano-Ge-based anodes for ultra-high rate charge lithium batteries, the lithium-carbon fluoride battery for space and medical applications, and more recently liquid anodes. He has coauthored more than 250 papers on batteries and their materials and systems. He has received scientific awards from NASA, NATO, IBA, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and IEEE, among others.