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Dr. Gautam G. Yadav
Director of Advanced Battery Development
Urban Electric Power (UEP) Inc.
Bio: Dr. Gautam G.
Yadav is an expert materials scientist and electrochemist, working as the Director of Advanced Battery Development at Urban Electric Power (UEP) in New York. He earned his doctoral degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University, where he specialized
in synthesizing 1D complex metal oxide nanowires for thermoelectric applications and lithium(Li)-ion batteries. Prior to joining UEP, Dr. Yadav worked as a Senior Scientist at the CUNY Energy Institute, where he led the advancement of highly energy dense aqueous-based
batteries based on manganese dioxide (MnO2) and zinc (Zn) as a replacement for the expensive and dangerous Li-ion batteries for grid-storage applications. He is the primary inventor of the reversible second-electron MnO2 technology and
the breakthrough high voltage (2.45-2.8V) MnO2|Zn battery, which are published in
Nature Communications and
ACS Energy Letters, respectively. He has authored 19 publications and filed over 26 patents on MnO2|Zn technology, which have been licensed by UEP. At UEP, Dr. Yadav is leading a team of
engineers and scientists to bring the second-electron MnO2 and high voltage (2.45-2.8V) MnO2|Zn battery to commercialization.
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"Engineering an Aqueous Energy Dense Manganese Dioxide|Zinc Battery to
Challenge Lithium-Ion’s Dominance"
Tuesday, September 17, 2019
3:00 p.m. – 4:15 p.m.
FRNY G140
– Reception at 2:30 p.m. in Henson Atrium –
The current landscape of energy storage systems is dominated by lithium-ion batteries because of their high energy densities, and continuous
improvement in performance through the last few decades for use in a number of applications. They certainly have been a boon for rapid societal development; however, they also have had major disadvantages like high cost, severe toxicity, high chances of flammability
and ethical concerns about the use of cobalt. Aqueous batteries containing manganese dioxide (MnO2) and zinc (Zn) have the theoretical capacities to deliver high energy densities comparable to some variations of lithium-ion batteries, have low cost and toxicity,
and high material abundance to be used as an alternative battery compared to the current status quo. However, MnO2 and Zn have been highly irreversible and accessing close to their theoretical capacities has been very challenging. The current status quo in
aqueous batteries has been to intercalate Zn and H-ions into layered structures to deliver modest capacities, which also has unfortunately resulted in limited energy densities. These layered structures, although novel, face limitations like their layered counterparts
in lithium (Li)-ion batteries, where the capacity is limited to the host’s intercalation capacity. Low voltage of ~1.1-1.4V is another Achilles heel of aqueous Zn-anode batteries, where it is simply not comparable to the high voltage properties of Li-ion.
MnO2|Zn batteries can compete with Li-ion because of its safe and abundant raw materials, nonflammable electrolyte and theoretical energy density, however, sufficient advances are required for it to be considered a true challenger.
In this talk, we will present a new strategy to enable a new generation of energy dense aqueousbased batteries, where we exploit the
conversion reactions of MnO2 and Zn electrodes to extract significantly higher capacity compared to intercalation systems. Accessing the conversion reactions allows us to achieve theoretical capacities of 617 mAh/g (~30 mAh/cm2) from MnO2 and 810 mAh/g (~30
mAh/cm2) from Zn anodes, respectively. The high areal capacities help to attain unprecedented energy densities of 210 Wh/L, which is the highest of all aqueous-based batteries. We will also present our work on identifying new Mn-based conversion compounds
that give higher capacities and demonstrate its application in the case of small-scale automobile. We will also present our breakthrough work on breaking the 2V barrier in aqueous Zn batteries, where we have demonstrated for the first time in the field of
energy storage 2.45V and 2.8V MnO2|Zn aqueous batteries capable of accessing the theoretical capacity, which can truly challenge Li-ion’s dominance. Finally, we will briefly present our commercialization experience, and how market forces and application have
guided the design and research of these batteries.
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