Following the successful kick-off in the summer at the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology in Pfinztal, the consortium is currently faced with the task of recruiting 17 highly qualified doctoral students. As part of the European Union-funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Doctoral Programme (MSCA Doctoral Networks, MSCA-DN), they will work on a research and training project to develop novel porous electrode architectures for redox flow batteries.
A hallmark of redox flow batteries is that they store energy in liquid electrolytes that are pumped through an electrochemical cell. Their main features are the independent scalability of power and capacity, a long service life of up to 20 years or 20,000 cycles, high safety and the possibility of theoretically almost unlimited energy storage capacity due to the size of the tanks. These properties make them an important component in the current discussion about large-scale stationary energy storage.
"Vanadium-based systems are already commercialised, but are still comparatively expensive. Through targeted optimisation at the micro, meso and macro levels, new materials are to be used to improve electricity and electrolyte transport and significantly increase the reaction surfaces of the electrodes," explains Prof. Dr. Christina Roth, Chair of Materials Process Engineering.
SPACER is thus making an important contribution to the development of cost-effective and durable energy storage solutions for the energy transition.
As part of this call for proposals, the European Commission will fund a total of 149 excellent doctoral programmes with €608.6 million to train over 1,800 doctoral students in academia and beyond. The European Research Agency (REA) received 1,417 applications for this call for proposals. This corresponds to a success rate of only 10.6%. SPACER is thus one of a small number of particularly competitive projects selected.
Dr. Daniel Leykam of LSWV, says: "The intensive and close cooperation between researchers from different countries and disciplines not only opens up new perspectives, but is also a lot of fun."
