Facilities and expertise of partner universities
Deakin University (Administrating Organisation)
World-class electrochemistry, battery prototyping, conditioning and testing facilities, suited to support fundamental and applied research in energy storage.
Facilities for characterisation of air sensitive battery and supercapacitor samples are available at Deakin’s Advanced Characterisation Facility.
Deakin’s Centre for Advanced Design in Engineering Training (CADET) includes a state of the art Grid and Renewables Testing and Simulation Facility. Our BatTRI-Hub facility incorporates a prototyping centre to accelerate the development of new batteries and includes:
- battery pouch cell device assembly
- performance evaluation – high temperature testing and processing, electrode formulation and foil preparation
- capability to synthesise and test new formulations for advanced, next-generation lithium and sodium battery chemistries at practical scales.
The Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation
The Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation (IISRI) can simulate and review smart grid and technology systems.
Continued advancement in clean energy generation technologies, enhanced storage capabilities, intelligent and secure management of systems, improvements in energy and efficiency and progressive support policy will all be fundamental to global endeavours to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, combat climate change and address increasing demands for energy.
Deakin University is installing a range of renewable energy-based technologies as demonstrators and research platforms within its Waurn Ponds campus microgrid, as part of the University’s commitment to the energy sector:
- an industrial-scale 7.25 mW smart microgrid energy system
- a solar generation farm
- a one-megawatt battery storage capacity
- multiple small distributed energy resources
- an integrated new research and visualisation centre for research on micro-grid performance research and data gathering, and student education and training.
Deakin projects will aim to support the growth in Australian battery fabrication capabilities, to enhance battery testing facilities and to develop new battery energy storage systems.
Battery management system technologies developed for a diverse range of deployment environments that have demanding safety, reliability, security and quality requirements.
Monash University
Monash University research within the Centre comprises of enterprise research from the School of Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering and the Monash Energy Materials and Systems Institute.
Prof Doug MacFarlane: Ionic Liquids and electroactive materials for sustainable sysnthesis. Using Ionic Liquids as electrolytes for devices as a substitute to replace volatile organic compounds (VOCs) as electrolytes for domestic and industrial batteries.
Our work is shifting focus to different types of batteries, to increase safety and allow advances in terms of power density and/or reduced costs. Electrical energy storage technologies, including new advanced battery chemistries (lithium metal, sodium, magnesium and flow chemistries) as well as supercapacitors are core to this research.
Dr Parama Chakraborty Banerjee has expertise in electrochemistry, batteries and micro-super capacitors.
Facilities include:
- State of the art sustainable chemistry laboratories to design and synthesise battery and super capacitor active materials
- Large electrochemistry instrumentation for analysis and testing of devices
- PerkinElmer Flagship Facility for analytical chemistry
The University of Melbourne
Professor Dan Li: expertise in nano-ionics and nano-fluidics, design strategies for supercapacitors, nanostructured electrodes for electrochemical devices, graphene technologies, Colloidal processing of advanced materials, electrochemical energy materials and devices (e.g. supercapacitors, batteries and fuel cells), and flexible electronics.
The University of Melbourne has a dedicated Materials Characterisation and Fabrication Platform that supports materials and chemical research and fabrication uniquely at the nanoscale.
University of South Australia
The Future Industries Institute at the University of South Australia provides capacity in Energy and advanced manufacturing with scientists and engineers specialising in polymer chemistry, materials science and surface engineering.
Facilities for:
- The design and deposition of multi-layer thin film coating systems – crucial for thin-film electrodes for flexible and miniaturised batteries and supercapacitors
- Development of environmentally robust coating systems
- Process development and scale up
- Energy capture, storage and conversion
- Design and fabrication of advanced nanomaterials and nanocomposites
- Conducting polymer synthesis and device fabrication
- Materials science and catalysis
Queensland University of Technology
The QUT team is led by Profs Peter Talbot and Jose Alarco. Their combined expertise includes a range of nanomaterials processing and manufacturing (crucial as catalysts for batteries), product development, scale-up and delivery.
The Banyo Pilot Plant is a general-purpose facility for large-scale and scaled-up research in traditional engineering, scientific applications, and testing and validation. It includes an Australian first facility that produces commercial grade 18650 size lithium-ion batteries. The facility can rapidly prototype new battery formulations and cell types, while the university’s Central Analytical Research Facility houses instruments for analysis and characterisation.
