Energy generation

The Enlit Europe 2022 energy conference recently took place, and the Graphene Flagship participated, showing some of the latest energy-related graphene projects. We took the chance to discuss graphene with some of the flagship researchers, and we also talked to Prof. Jari Kinaret, the director of the flagship project, to learn of how he summarizes the last 10 years now that the flagship project will soon end.

Q: We understand that the Graphene Flagship is attending Enlit Europe 2022, showing some new graphene R&D projects. We'll be happy to get an overview of what will be displayed at the event.

At Enlit Europe, the Graphene Flagship exhibited innovations from its Spearhead Projects, which are industry-led initiatives working to move materials from research labs towards commercial applications. Among these initiatives are:

• CircuitBreakers, led by ABB and developing first-of-their-kind grease-free, maintenance-free, low-voltage circuit breakers for fault protection in key parts of the electrical grid;
• GRAPES, led by Enel Green Power and working on combining silicon solar cells with perovskite solar cells, paving the way for low-cost, highly efficient photovoltaic energy, surpassing the limits of silicon based cells.

Researchers from Deakin University's Institute for Frontier Materials (IFM) aim to harness the ocean's potential for renewable and clean energy. In a recent study, they demonstrated how a two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterial membrane technology can improve blue energy harvesting processes. Blue energy harvesting is renewable energy that uses the salt content difference between river water and seawater to generate electricity.

"Ocean energy is made up of five forms—tidal, water waves, ocean currents, temperature gradients and salinity gradient energy, offering a potential alternative, limitless energy resource," says Associate Professor Weiwei Lei, who is leading the sustainable energy generation project at IFM. "Therefore, harvesting ocean energy through artificial devices has attracted tremendous interest. In particular, salinity gradient energy, also called 'osmotic energy' or 'blue energy,' provides significant promise for the development of renewable energy. It has a potential 1 TW energy (8500 TW h in a year), which exceeds the sum of hydraulic, nuclear, wind and solar energy in 2015. With the development of nanotechnology and 2D nanomaterials, novel 2D nanomaterials' membranes with nanopores and nanochannels were designed for blue energy harvesting. However, the energy harvesting efficiency of these membranes is still too low to meet the demands of practical applications due to their high internal resistance and low selectivity of ions. New advanced 2D nanomaterial membranes with novel and robust properties will solve this problem, which is in high demand now."

Researchers from China's Tsinghua University have constructed highly aligned graphene oxide (GO) nanochannels for sustainable energy production using a freeze-casting process. The new method could address an issue that impedes the generation of electricity from natural water flow through engineered nanochannels, which could become a viable way to cater to the fast-growing renewable power needs.

Large-scale nanochannel integration and the multi-parameter coupling restrictive influence on electric generation currently remain big challenges for macroscale applications, but this novel design encourages spontaneous absorption and directed transfer of water within the nanochannels to generate clean electricity.

Germany-based Skeleton Technologies has been on the forefront of graphene-based supercapacitors development for many years, and the company recently made some major announcements, including a large (>€70 million) financing round, the super-battery project and several strategic customers and projects - including ones with Medcom, Skoda, CAF, Wrightbus and Marubeni.

We recently talked with Skeleton's VP of automotive products, Sebastian Pohlmann, who updated us on the company's business and technology.

Sweden-based 2D Fab has announced that it is partnering up with Linköping University, Ahlstrom Munksjö and RISE to develop graphene-paper for electrocatalytic production of hydrogen peroxide.

Hydrogen peroxide, H₂O₂, is a chemical compound between hydrogen and oxygen. It is used in various products, from hair dyes and teeth whiteners to pulp- and paper-bleaching. H₂O₂ is also known as a sustainable material that may hold the key to efficient and inexpensive energy technology of the future.

Researchers at the Graphene Integrated Functional Technologies (GIFT) Research Cluster at Queen’s University in Canada have developed a novel graphene-based flexible hybrid batterysupercapacitor device.

The device consists of high specific surface area electrodes paired with an electrolyte, which contains a redox species that can exist in more than two oxidation states. The two initially equal half-cells of the device consist of a reduced graphene oxide hydrogel which encapsulates vanadium ions, synthesized with a single-step method.

India-based Log9 Materials believes that the key to better EVs is to focus on energy-generation, instead of energy storage. Log9 Materials says that a car powered by aluminium fuel cells can have a range of 1000 km post which the aluminium plates can be replaced within minutes.

According to Log9, aluminium fuel cells would primarily use three components aluminium, water, and carbon in the form of graphene. In simple words, there’s water between layers of graphene, and when aluminium comes in contact with water, it corrodes releasing energy. Log9 explains that procuring raw materials for aluminium fuel cells is much simpler than those for lithium-ion batteries which use lithium and cobalt, so manufacturing cost can be considerably lower for aluminium fuel cells than lithium-ion battery packs.

Two teams from the University of Manchester are the winners of a £70,000 prize for novel applications of graphene. Both teams are addressing key societal challenges on future energy and food security: seeking breakthroughs by using 2D materials to produce hydrogen to generate energy, and by designing polymer hydrogels to increase food production.

The Eli and Britt Harari Enterprise Award, in association with Nobel Laureate Sir Andre Geim, is awarded each year to help commercialize graphene concepts from Manchester University students, researchers and graduates. The prize is supported by former Manchester physics student, Dr. Eli Harari, founder of global flash-memory giant, SanDisk

Project "HEA2D", which started in 2016 and set out to investigate the production, qualities, and applications of 2D nanomaterials, recently demonstrated end-to-end processing chain of two-dimensional nanomaterials. The project is a collaboration between AIXTRON, AMO, Coatema, Fraunhofer and Kunststoff-Institut für die mittelständische Wirtschaft (K.I.M.W.).

It was stated that the "HEA2D" consortium successfully demonstrated an end-to-end processing chain of two-dimensional nanomaterials as part of its results. 2D materials integrated into mass production processes have the potential to create integrated and systemic product and production solutions that are socially, economically and ecologically sustainable. Application areas for the technologies developed and materials investigated in this project are mainly composite materials and coatings, highly sensitive sensors, power generation and storage, electronics, information and communication technologies as well as photonics and quantum technologies.

Rice University researchers have recently taken the idea of wearable devices that harvest energy from movement to a new level. Prof. James Tour's lab has adapted laser-induced graphene (LIG) into small, metal-free devices that generate electricity.

Putting the LIG composites in contact with other surfaces produces static electricity that can be used to power devices. This relies on the triboelectric effect, by which materials gather a charge through contact. When they are put together and then pulled apart, surface charges build up that can be channeled toward power generation.