Faraday Institution has announced a new government funding of up to £42m to support four application-inspired energy storage research projects to be carried out by four UK-based consortia.
The objective of the research program will be to address battery challenges to accelerate the electric vehicle (EV) adoption, stated the UK’s independent national battery research institute.
Faraday said that the research, if successful will place the UK in the leading position for battery technology in the world.
The four projects selected by the institute are “Extending battery life” led by the University of Cambridge, “Battery system modeling” led by Imperial College London (ICL), “Recycling and reuse” led by the University of Birmingham, and “Next generation solid state batteries” led by The University of Oxford.
Faraday said that the topics for the four projects were selected in consultation with industry, which will collaborate with each of them. It added that this type of partnership will help to ensure that the research comes up with findings and solutions that suit the requirements of business.
Additionally, industrial partners will help fund a total of £4.6m for the four projects.
Faraday Institution founding executive chair Peter B. Littlewood said: “To deliver the much needed improvement in air quality in our cities and achieve our aspiration for cleaner energy targets we need to shift to electric vehicles quickly.
“These research programmes will help the UK achieve this. To be impactful on increasing energy density, lowering cost, extending lifetime, and improving battery safety requires a substantial and focused effort in fundamental research.”
The Extending battery life project will study how environmental and internal battery stresses impact electric vehicle (EV) batteries in the long run.
The Battery system modelling project aims to create new software tools to understand and predict battery performance. This is expected to be done by connecting understanding of battery materials at the atomic level all the way up to an assembled battery pack.
The Recycling and reuse project will aim at determining the methods in which exhausted lithium batteries can be recycled.
The Next generation solid state batteries project aims to break down the obstacles that are hindering solid-state batteries from progressing to market.