Mid-year symposium brings partners together

Dr Asem Mousa, CSIRO

About 60 people attended the storEnergy mid-year symposium in person with another 20 joining online. The full day included excellent presentations by two guest speakers as well as comprehensive updates by PhDs and lead researchers on a number of projects.
CSIRO’s Director, Future Science Platform, Revolutionary Storage Systems, Dr Asem Mousa shared reflections on decarbonisation pathways in the mining sector and the role of energy storage. Dr Mousa emphasised that a common theme in the mining sector is recognition that electricity is the easiest way to reduce emissions so energy storage is a critical component of the strategy. A challenge for energy storage in the sector is developing the large batteries required for hydrogen fuel cell trucks. He said there is a need for new ideas in energy storage that will disrupt lithium-ion batteries. Read more
CEO of Jupiter Ionics, Dr Charlie Day spoke on a topic of interest to everyone in the audience, ‘Working at the interface between business and academia’. The company is building a modular production system for green ammonia, based on the technology developed by Prof Douglas MacFarlane and Dr Alexandr Simonov and their team at Monash University.
Dr Day’s key points were the importance of focusing on people first, technology second – make sure you have the right people, shared understanding of the goal and respective roles; respecting cultural and institutional differences; share generously; and understand that risks and rewards are rarely distributed uniformly.
University of Melbourne research fellow, Lianhai Zu gave an update about his project with industry partner SupraG Energy on graphene-based membrane electrodes. This prompted suggestions of possibilities to include anions being developed by other storEnergy researchers.
PhD researcher Ben Mapleback, working with Defence Science and Technology Group spoke about his research on high energy density supercapacitors using high-performance, defence-grade composites. Jayanth Kumar spoke about his project to develop a hybrid energy storage and management system for drones; Mohammad Ziauddin (Zia) described his latest research on developing an organic electrolyte for Zn-air batteries; Bodie Fuller, working with industry partner Sentek, explained the challenges of using batteries for remote sending applications in agriculture. Mojtaba Eftekharnia described his progress on optimising the manufacturing process for advanced Li metal batteries; Suleyman Yildiz on his project investigating hybrid battery/capacitor systems and their applications; while Dale Duncan described his latest results developing novel borate ester anions for sodium batteries.