Under carefully controlled conditions, combusting flames can be used to produce not polluting soot but rather valuable materials, including some that are critical in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. Given that definition, she saw another role for the expertise she and her team have developed: They could explore the use of combustion to make materials for the energy transition.
“While we generally think of fossil fuels when we think of combustion, the term ‘combustion’ encompasses many high-temperature chemical reactions that involve oxygen and typically emit light and large amounts of heat,” she says. In considering the possibilities, she notes that combustion refers only to the process-not to what’s burning. “So we thought, given our background in combustion, what’s the best way we can contribute to the energy transition?” says Deng. Now an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Class of 1954 Career Development Professor, Deng leads an MIT group that, among other things, develops theoretical models to help understand and control combustion systems to make them more efficient and to control the formation of emissions, including particles of soot. Sili Deng has spent her career thinking about combustion. As the energy transition progresses, researchers worldwide are tackling the many challenges that arise. Notably, solar and wind systems are replacing fossil fuel combustion for generating electricity and heat, and batteries are replacing the internal combustion engine for powering vehicles. Now, to avert the threat of climate change, the energy system is changing. The components in the system are already used in industry, so the researchers believe that rapid commercialization and scale-up should be possible.įor more than a century, much of the world has run on the combustion of fossil fuels.
Electrochemical tests show that their materials should produce lithium-ion batteries that perform as well as those used in electric vehicles today, providing a comparable driving range, charge and discharge rate, and lifetime. Based on extensive lab-scale experiments, the researchers’ system promises to be simpler, much quicker, and far less energy-intensive than the conventional method now used to manufacture cathode materials. MIT combustion experts have designed a system that uses flames to produce materials for cathodes of lithium-ion batteries-materials that now contribute to both the high cost and the high performance of those batteries. Want more audio articles? Subscribe to Energy Reads →
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