Energy Science
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Energy Storage
A key component in reducing our nation's dependence on fossil fuels and diversifying our nation's energy sources will be the development of advanced electrical energy storage technologies. Efficient electrical energy storage systems can enable sporadic sources such as wind and solar to deliver more consistent power to the grid, and transitioning to hybrid and eventually all-electric vehicles will have a dramatic effect on both oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. However, particularly in the case of vehicles, development of safe, economical electrical energy storage systems with energy and power densities approaching those of gasoline will require significant scientific and engineering breakthroughs. These breakthroughs require an integrated approach, bringing the full breadth of experiment, theory, and simulation to bear on the challenges in order to achieve the understanding that will enable the development of new materials, chemical systems, and manufacturing processes necessary. We are developing computational tools needed to enable the much-needed improvements in battery technology, and also to specifically address safety issues for LIBs. In addition, these tools will be generally applicable to other energy storage devices, including future chemistries such as Li-Air, supercapacitors, hybrid supercapacitor-batteries, etc.
CAEBAT (Contact Sreekanth Pannala)
We are developing a flexible, robust, scalable open-architecture based framework that can integrate models of coupled multiphysics phenomena (charge and thermal transport; electrochemical reactions; mechanical stresses) across the porous 3D structure of the electrodes (cathodes and anodes) and the solid or liquid electrolyte system while obtaining inputs from the lower-length processes through closures based on resolved quantities. The environment has a highly-modular design with well-defined interfaces, carefully-designed data structures, and a lightweight Python backplane. The framework services control the various software components through component adapters and the components communicate with the battery state through state adapters. The battery state is the minimal digital description of the battery in space and time such that a simulation can uniquely step through physics components as appropriate to advance in time from each state point to the next. The OAS (Open Architecture framework), along with physics and support components and the adapters create a virtual software environment for battery designers and researchers known as VIBE (Virtual Integrated Battery Environment).
EERE (Contact ???)
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