Speakers:
Franz Josef Ulm, MIT
Visit us at https://iea-es.org/
Uh good evening or uh good afternoon in Germany or wherever you are um uh I’m going to speak today about the multifunctional semon based materials with uh focus on uh carbon semon super capacitors I assume that uh uh you don’t know anything of super capacitors as I didn’t know anything about super
Capacitors maybe five years ago um uh this work has been done together with my colleague ADM magic at uh MIT uh collaborators Nikolas shanu Damen stefanuk James Weaver Yang sha horn here at MIT well I also want to dedicate this talk to a young engineer colleague Majid
Masharawi from Gaza and Palestine I will who has inspired much of this work I’ll come back to this later on so what are we talking about when it comes to energy storage challenge I think this is nothing new for you um the problem of um uh uh the energy transition is
Um that uh uh the this uh energy transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy sources to electron based energy sources requires a storage solution for the simple reason that uh fossil fuel classically uh um uh combine the storage and the carrier energy carrier in in the
Same place so when you take one liter of fuel bring it from one place to the other you carry with you with it um the energy uh in it U and you uh have it uh the source available this is different when it comes to uh renewable energies
Where uh the energy carry and energy source actually are separated uh the energy source for instance solar uh uh creating uh electrical energy need to be stored intermittently at least uh for many applications and we know this uh immediately from the imbalance between the supply and the demand side
Uh of um in the renewable energy sector uh they involve different time scales uh whether it is wind or whether it’s tidal waves or whether they are or solar and for that reason energy storage is a key factor in order to achieve the energy transition the problem right now is that
The energy uh storage solution that exist uh basically based on Battery Technology and I’m going to come back to that here uh that most of the precursors used for um batteries like lithium are um available only uh in very particular Parts in addition the processing of them are dominated
Done in in China so even if you have a lithium Source you still have to transport this which makes this technology this Battery Technology at its current state very difficult to scale uh to the level where we need it in order to make uh energy storage solutions available for everyone and uh
Everywhere and it is here where we uh come into the play and I will talk about concrete now uh concrete you may be aware of it is um the material most consumed on planet Earth after water um uh uh in fact it is the backbone material of our infrastructure
Needs uh our societal needs for uh shelter hospitals kindergarten you name it a but at the same time this omnipresence of uh cement which is the precursor for making concrete this gray powder um uh this omnipresence of cement and concrete entails uh a huge environmental impact roughly uh 10% of
The worldwide CO2 emissions actually relate to the production of s so if a carbon tax for instance would be imposed on the production of salmona on the order of 150 and $200 there would be no concrete future unless there’s something done well in the industry right now the
Industry uh the cement industry uh committed to reaching uh uh carbon neutrality by 2050 but like many industrial sectors has no idea how to achieve that goal uh right now the solutions that exist are well let’s replace cement by some other materials um uh fuel substitution so
Instead of heating uh with uh some fossil fuel Let’s uh substitute this with other fuels um the point about increased thermal efficiency I think is something which uh you know very well in in in uh in Europe uh uh as this is a matter of even politician discuss that
Matter um then there are approaches which are based on less is more by uh design and then of course the improved longevity of infrastructure so that uh uh one does more in time with the material uh than before there are some carbon capture and storage solution but
That’s not what I’m going to talk today about today I speak about uh electrical conductivity adding a new function to concrete to this backbone material of uh and its strength in our infrastructure or in our buildings adding this new function of electrical conductivity for energy storage which would help to
Reduce in the overall life cycle analysis of concrete its environmental footprint but let’s get real here concrete is strong everybody can make it and we know that uh and it has a its huge environmental IM footprint but it is an insulator like most oxides it’s an insulator so it cannot conduct uh uh
Electrons uh so how do we add this functionality to concrete well the idea actually here is um we need to add another component to it and what we do is we add uh the best uh electron conductive material to it which is carbon actually carbon black powder nanocarbon black
Powder carbon black as you know is uh used in uh many industrial application uh just think about your tires of your cars um um but so we add nanocarbon particles in the r relatively small concentration so we add uh roughly 10% uh by volume of nanocarbon black to
Classical Portland cement we add a little bit of super plasticizer in order to master the rology of the material and then water and then the magic of chemistry takes place and we achieve an electron conductive uh carbon cement composite as you see here the small amount of carbon black makes the
Material uh black not gray as classical uh cement but it is electron conductive but what happens there actually this magic of chemistry um um well uh what happens is the following we are dealing here with two different materials a hydrophobic carbon black which when you add water to it
Clumps little bit the same thing what happens when you add uh uh water to uh uh to flour in your in your kitchen so it clumps but if the same water the same water is consumed by the hydration reaction of hydrophilic cement these clumping forces vanas forces in the
Alkaline environment of the cement hydration are released in order to generate actually uh a a volumetric wire so uh percolated system of nanocarbon black particles permeating a strength bearing uh M Matrix and why is it important to know about this chemical process that this is a chemical driven
Process of a hydrophobic and the hydro philic pH here is because it is chemically driven it is highly repetitive it does not require an operator in order to do it and that makes this solution at least from an electron conductivity point of view um uh uh a scalable uh
Solution well we can look closer at uh this material in order to to visualize uh uh these carbon black uh uh permeating this strength bearing cmon based uh uh uh matrix by means of ramen spectroscopy as you may know Ramen spectroscopy is a technique which uh activates um uh by light um vibrations
At very small scale and it’s an Ideal tool in order to separate what is the oxide part of it and what is uh the carbon part of it it also allows us to distinguish other carbon sources like natural carbonation from CO2 of the material uh uh through this uh technique
And if we do this actually what we realize is that this uh uh carbon black this volumetric wire actually permeates at all different scales the system it’s a as you see in this in these lower three pictures here uh from sem EDS uh uh uh observations we create a space
Filling material which almost has a fractal type uh uh geometric texture um the interesting thing about this is that this uh uh space filling volumetric wire is everywhere throughout the material while allowing at the same time um uh the permeation of uh or the existence of
Um cmon based uh strength carrying uh uh skeleton which can carry loads so and what is happening then here here’s a typical graph what happens here on the Y AIS in a l logarithmic scale you see the resistivity which is one over the electron conductivity and on
The um xais the carbon black particles in percent of weight of uh cement uh what you see here is classically you have a relatively High resistivity uh until uh uh a percentage of roughly 2.5% and then you see this drop by seven orders of magnitude seven orders of magnitude of this resistivity the
Inverse being the electron conductivity um uh which is the indication that at that point this combination of a hydrophilic and hydrophobic face has led to a pated uh electron conductive uh material so where does that material play so um use here this uh U ashb plot which plots resistivity
Versus cost here in pound Sterling exus this uh non-european currency um and as you see here this resistivity these orders of magnetude of resistivity place in a relatively cheap cost uh uh uh rearm the the cost of um cement is is roughly $100 uh uh per ton of cement produced we
Add to it carbon black which is equally cheap by production and there are very interesting new ways of getting carbon black for instance uh uh by the separation of methan into hydrogen and carbon black um uh so what is interesting here is that this material this carbon C uh composite material U is
Uh play plays in a in a price range of the commodity Market which makes it available for everyone so what types of applications you can think about well first one is if you remind yourself that the material even at this small percentage is uh has hydrophobic surfaces well one can imagine to Simply
Put them for free store resistance on uh Pavements a second one is um self heating so-called Jewel effect uh for instance for deicing Bridges sidewalks airport runways Etc or radiant floor heating instead of having a wire you just have made material for this purpose a third one which I would
Concentrate today on is the energy storage and I will come to these structural super capacitors and if you’re in the military field uh there can of course be the the use of the fire dat cage effect uh could be used but let me Focus just here on the Civil
Applications self Heating and energy storage so talking about self heating so what is this uh how does this self heating goes well the interesting thing about this is that uh u in the moment if you have an electron conductive material you can redo with this material your everyday experience of an electric
Stove meaning uh if you apply a voltage to uh uh the system you get uh you generate Heat throughout uh the sample and uh the temperature rises U there’s a distinct time scale to this rise which relates to the boundary conditions to the thermal boundary conditions of the
System but intrinsic to the process is the observation that uh the temperature increase uh scales with the square of the voltage meaning if you go from one volt to two volts you get four times higher heat generation and thus higher temperature so that is you can do this
With a very simple experiment you know putting a sample as I show here on the left side uh between two conductive uh papers and you measure the temperature inside here but this becomes also scalable to well to um to a pavement structure uh we’re talking here about
Length scales which is like a sidewalk typical sidewalk which we try to mimic in our uh lab so what I show you here are um uh how many six uh uh panels imagine them like tiles and these tiles are um connected here to a voltage and we apply different voltages here in
Order to show how uh uh the temperature rises so that’s in our Labs then we apply the thermal camera and what you see here if I REM remind you that this was a 0 1224 how homogeneous this heat actually is generated within uh um the material so that is an application which is
Already ready to go um simply by making use of the so-called Jewel effect in order to um to use this for outside heating I think it’s a uh we don’t need salt on our Pavements anymore if we were to use this material or think about it if um covid or another pandemic would
Hit us we could go into a restaurant and sit outside having the heating coming from below with a uh a very efficient uh uh heating Source if in addition this heating source is provided from a renewable source well then this becomes a highly sustainable uh heating system there are many other application which
One can imagine with these type of systems in uh insulation system for buildings um uh by breaking the difference of the temperature between inside and outside by means of such a thermal layer this is not new applications actually there have been other people who have tried this before with um steel
Fibers steel shavings Etc the advantage of this particular technology of uh using cement and carbon black nanocarbon black is that the percolation threshold is much much lower if you take steel shavings for instance you need at least 20% of Steel shavings per volume in order to get a percolated uh uh electron
Conductive uh Network the same would be if you use higher quality uh carbons uh um for instance sheet type carbons uh the percolation threshold would be uh much higher as a consequence this system as we have it here is highly efficient efficient and would be cost-wise uh uh quite
Interesting as I said just for uh for those who are more interested on the engineering side of it h the overall design of such a system would be would have three components there is well some structural parameters like thickness length of the of a slab then there’s a
Control parameter which is highly uh uh accurate which is the voltage to the power to and finally the material capacity the Mix Design here which uh enters uh um uh the picture so here an example how multifunctionality uh of a commodity material uh can help us uh to make the
Energy transition for instance for heating systems but let me come to the main talk main part of my talk which deals with energy storage uh already evok uh uh this need to shift to Green energy uh uh that this shift requires these uh massive Storage Solutions and structures for everyone and
Everywhere but is there a future with concrete batteries and even though I put the word battery here I want to make clear this not a battery and I will explain why well can you imagine that we have this type of Highly engineered system in this gray blocks well how does
This actually work so let me make clear how does an a battery works versus is a super capacitor a battery transforms uh uh electrical energy into chemical energy so when you charge it electrical energy comes in it is changed into chemical energy and then when you discharge it the inverse process takes
Place which is why you get a couple of hundred maybe thousand Cycles out of it and you know the decline of batteries is um is a major issue for longevity of batteries and in many applications we do not know actually what to do with the remnants of these battery after they are
Depleted super capacitor work quite different um uh while we have uh two electrodes so two sides of uh the material uh one charge positive the other one negative and in between a separator which allows ions to pass through but no uh charge when you polarize these electrodes ions from the PO solution or
From the solution in between the uh between the electrons uh are absorbed onto these electrodes so actually counter ions meaning if you charge an electrode positively you get the negative ions of the electrolytes or salt solution you get the negative ions onto the surface and on the other side
Happens the opposite so if you charge the electrode negative L you will get the positive ions of the electrolyte getting onto the surface if you discharges they return into that space and so you can have you have almost unlimited numbers of um charge discharge in contrast to batteries so there’s no
Chemical reaction taking place uh um it’s a pure uh electrochemical absorption process so but let me be clear about it we don’t have plates like this here made out of rete what we actually have is we have a space the poor space of concrete or the salmon paste to host the
Electrolyte this is the natural porosity which is left inside the material at the end of the hydration reaction the hardening process of C so the electrolyte is inside the material at the same time we have this pated carbon Network which is for us the electrode or the conductive part to charge the uh
Electrolyte to polarize it so when we put on our material uh a positive charge then this uh volumetric wire permeating the material is immediately charged and it pulls then the uh uh opposite charge of ions out of the poor solution of the material both this uh uh network of
Carbon black uh uh particles and the porosity are a simple result of chemical reactions and here’s a typical example so um as you see here you see uh um such a prototype of some Thin um electrodes which we test in the lab uh you see two electrodes in between a
Separator which as I said allows uh uh ions to go through but no uh electrons it is charged from the top with a positive charge from the bottom with um a negative charge and uh so here’s again just a design on the on the top you have some
Uh um conductive uh uh paper in order to make sure that the entire surface is uh equally charged with uh either positive or negative uh uh electrical char Char and this the type of um of uh load which you or result which you obtain then what you can measure in the lab
Here um um if you go from a zero voltage for one voltage one volt we never go above one volt because the electrolyte is water-based and if we use a water-based electron uh water-based electrolyte you don’t want to go above the theoretical value of 1.2 23 volt because then uh the
Uh water would split into hydrogen and oxygen so we always limited to uh one volt here um but if you then run the cyclic test where you go from zero to one and back you see this hysteresis Loop in this current voltage plot well the area here in
Between without going into too much details is actually a measurement of the energy storage capacity of the material and to give you an idea uh the order of magnitude here is uh 1 kilj per kilogram of this material uh which is 028 wat hours per kilogram which if you take the
Daily residential energy consumption of um typical residential dwelling in in Germany or in in Europe is on the order of 40 Cube met of this much material so uh uh this is what you would see now this is a very small uh prototype uh system just charged to one
Volt but again how does the system work you see here this 3D pore Network connected pores in the semon paste so which is which hosts the um electrolyte we call it the transport porosity as a which is the result of the hydration of the material and then we store the energy along this
Uh uh volumetric wire and they the key quantity which is of importance is the specific surface the in meter Square per gram of carbon black here and as you see let’s say for all these different elect uh um electrodes which we produced you see this linear scaling which only
Depends on the specific surface so the higher the specific surface of the carbon black which you employ the more energy you can store along the volumetric wire after we found this it was pretty evident that this would be the case but I started out with talking about multifunctionality we should also
Be cognizant of the fact that when you add a hydrophobic material into a material which is hydrophilic but also cohesive based meaning creating between the cement hydrated cement particles cohesive forces that when you add this hydrophobicity in it you the strength goes down the strength of the material
Which comes from the cohesive uh cohesion of the material which means that on the one side we need materials which have a very high porosity as high as possible in order to get as much electrolyte inside the material for the storage onto the carbon black but at the same time we know that
The same porosity leads to a strength reduction of the material which means there exist for each application a sweet spot uh between the energy storage capacity on the one side and uh uh the strength capacity um uh uh uh on the other now once you have one element of
Course you can you can build systems of the super capacitor you don’t have you’re not limited here to one volt but what you can do here as you see in this example you take three of these super capacitors and put them in series so these were our first uh attempts of
Doing that you just put them in series here and then charge it with the photovoltaic cells in the lab for proof uh uh of concept and of course when you uh discharges so when you disconnect after some charging uh the system you know you get an LED uh light working the
Reason why we took three volt is because you know you can make a nice yellow lamp uh on you need a little bit more than one volt in order to get a red light on so that’s actually a highly repeatable uh uh system but how do we scale this
Actually uh to the next level so our next Target then was a 12vt equivalent battery if you want and you see here this these are not oros um uh uh Suites but these are each one is sort of is a this uh double layered uh uh um electrodes so two
Electrodes here with a separator and then an conductive current collector in between and you build them up just here upwards so the Prototype idea here behind is in essence um if you think about a column which are everywhere omnipresent in our uh buildings um well you just fill them up with these super
Capacitors and connect them on the top to a positive charge on the bottom to a negative charge or vice versa and you can scale it up to whatever voltage you uh uh are dealing with so of course you know here you see this end design you
Just want to hold them in place um uh and you insulate the outside in order to avoid that the electrolyte runs out because we need the electrolyte for the ions to absorb onto this carbon black um Network so here sort of the first prototype development of this 12vt well
Battery uh 12vt super capacitor carbon cement super capacitor and then of course you know you repeat those test as uh uh as uh uh we have done before you charge them now not to one volt but to 12vt and because of the series Arrangement each one of these uh of
These two electrodes of these sort of separate has only one volt in there but all over of course you get now a much higher uh um energy storage into the system uh uh for instance with that type of system you can charge um uh uh an iPhone um the interesting thing about is
That is that the energy here which is store simply scales in the series arrangement with um with uh the numbers of uh of uh these super capacitor element uh let me also say that the rate of charging is scaled by the thickness of the electrodes so here in a lab we
Have a couple of millimeter went up to centimeter but in applications you would you would want to go to to other ones to to other thickness depending of whether you want to store over a day or whether you want to store in a couple of minutes or
Seconds so if you have a a column design for instance for 240 Vol volts in a building with typical height of 3 M 60 you would need sort of a a column height with electrodes which are 1.5 CM thickness which you fill up uh uh the column I’ve mostly spoken about cmon
Paste mixing um cement with water and carbon black but the same thing works of course with mortar mortar is when you add sand to it um uh which increases the strength by some frictional behavior um you the only thing is you dilute a little bit the energy storage capacity
Uh of this system but this is no problem to design this uh um accordingly so the same fast energy storage becomes possible with uh Mort system and for thick elements a long storage we can think about bringing this all the way to concrete let me finish around this year
By saying that all what I showed you right now is happening well in the lab um and of course now is the question how will the uh future of this uh uh technology look like how will we produce them well you know you have heard about uh additive manufacturing like 3D
Printing well that could be a great technology in order to print those electrodes at a scale of uh buildings but it could also be the elementary brick where each Elementary Bri brick has sort of is the equivalent of a 12vt super capacitor designed with a certain thickness each electrode to reach
Certain uh rate demands of uh uh the application the high-end application of obviously we are looking at is the self-charging roads and it’s a phenomenon which uh uh you know well when you charge wirelessly uh uh your phone I heard that these are one of the most sought after Christmas
Presents these days um which come now in a large variety of system but how does this technology work it is um uh uh what you need in order to charge Wireless ly a phone or a car is uh that you need two electric Fields one for application
The pavement the other one in the Electrical uh car well the one in the car already exists what you then need is um uh um if you have those two electric Fields then by uh electromagnetic induction uh um uh energy is transferred from one system to the other
One um that is feasible it’s actually a technology which is already in development but not with our materials actually with coils which are embedded inside the pavement but imagine that you could use the same material with which you built your Pavements you could use as a means to create this electric field
At high frequency it’s a high frequency uh application uh and charge a car automatically meaning when you drive to uh your shopping center where you do your shopping while you park there uh uh your car is charged or when you drive in your driveway or your in in your garage the
The car will be charged without uh uh uh plugging in uh the the the the car into an electric charger uh ultimately uh ideally we would like to drive on Pavements which charge the cars while driving which would take away this permanent fear of all EV drivers in M1 um will I
Run out of juice to reach uh uh my place another application is windmills for intermittent storage as you know the uh windmills operate right now at a relatively low efficiency and this low efficiency is not due to the technology it is due to the fact that wind actually is
Uh highly uh highly stochastic process and uh so we cannot get all the wind spikes transferred into energy because batteries are charging to slope um well here’s a technology which can do this so imagine that we could store this inter this energy which is created by uh wind intermittently into either the
Foundation well imagine column type foundations we call them pile foundations or even into the superstructure of course for this type of application we would need high strength applications for the uh column as well as the filling inside here with our uh uh carbon C super capacitor and then imagine what of
Structures we are looking for we need structures which have a relatively large surface in order to obtain high power application to reach high power applications um uh think about vascular networks uh as they exist in our bodies what type of architecture will we see so
You see this is a very exciting time uh to move into this sphere uh into this multifunctional design space um uh for homes uh for walls for uh uh uh Pavements how they would look like I started out by dedicating uh this talk to my young colleague Majid mashari
She’s an engineer and CEO from Gaza City actually she in 2015 uh was one of the first who has sort of tried to use uh in lightweight concrete bricks uh carbon this was after the 2014 war in in Gaza in 2019 she started actually uh sunbox a
Company uh to in Gaza with uh photovoltaic cells and build batteries together and when I met her and talked to her about it she was very enthusiastic about implementing also this technology in Gaza I haven’t heard from her since uh uh October 7 so I want
To dedicate this talk uh to her thank you very much um thank you uh Professor very much first of all uh uh thanks also for the dedication that’s very thoughtful I think and um I uh I’m very mind blown by the technology and and in my mind was ideas where this could
Be uh where where everywhere to use it and um I think it’s very uh it can lead to very creative Innovative uh Solutions I would have a lot of questions but of course the audience shall be first so if there’s um somebody with a question please just raise the digital hand um or
Write into the chat okay so I will start and maybe then someone will uh move forward I was uh wondering just a very technical question as the material um of course has a specific amount of water inside how does it behave with aging because I can imagine water with all his face changes
Is a little bit sneaky sometimes if you you talked about the um the columns if you imagine you would have it outside if there are temperature changes you will have I’m not sure if the water will have a a phas change if it’s inside or if it’s chemically bounded or you
Have super cooling I don’t know but do you have any experience already how it will behave okay it’s an excellent question so I don’t have the answers yet because we haven’t done actually the whole Cycles but um um so there is a a question of freeze Thor Cycles right so
Um the idea actually that a phase change uh would crack concrete now um there is this wrong perception actually that this increase of volume from liquid water to um solid ice uh that the increase of volume actually exerts this pressure however as I showed you before the um
The poor space in concrete is completely connected which means actually that uh you don’t have this pressure exerting the reason why concrete breaks under a freeze Thor Cycles are so-called um uh uh uh forces which relate to the charge which is the fact that ice is almost charge neutral whereas the surface of
The cement paste of the reaction product is discharged as a consequence you get a gradient here which which increases the pressure but now if I add carbon black into it I basically neutralized this difference and actually will have a positive effect on these free store
Cycles now this is at least a uh that that was actually one of the first applications which we looked with these materials um uh in order to um improve the free store cycles of uh um uh uh of concrete materials without thinking about anything about electron conductivity now this is only one aspect
Now comes the electrolyte it’s uh it’s it’s a little bit more uh difficult thing the most important thing is to keep to to keep the electrolyte inside the material over the entire lifespan and we’re talking about a lifespan of a structure maybe of 30 50 70 years how do
You keep this uh inside inside the material or to have some adaptive structures where you can change so you know change an electrolyte inside a change the U not the electrolyte change an electrode inside the system so these are questions which are design question operation questions which we need to
Address for each application but it will be different if for each application whether you operate in the wind energy or whether you operate in a foundation of a building which you can never change right or rarely change right uh or whether you operate in a column which is accessible from the top
In order to change an uh uh an electrode inside the system so these are all questions which needs to be now developed which is why I’m saying the engineering Starts Now of these Solutions in order to develop for all of for any specific applications all the requirements and uh uh feasibility here
For each specific application there is not one only measure yes I see it’s a it’s a good thing and a bad thing is the same uh side like there’s a lot of applications but also a lot of knowledge which has to make it has to be demonstrated how it’s working and and
What’s the optimization but but think about this think a little bit larger right we all the energy transition is a is a decision by a society to ensure its future future which means everybody should be involved and here you have a material everyone can produce you know
It’s not just that there’s a few people who are allowed to do this and it’s needs high specific labor force Etc it’s it’s not required so it is that this material actually its omnipresence on it ease of uh manufacturing has a has the potential actually here to bring a society to tell
A society okay uh put your your hands your work your money there where your mouth is this was nice said I fully agree yes yeah well I think yeah it’s a yeah I’m very mind blown my head is still thinking about applications yes I just want to give the audience the
Chance if there’s now a question I’m not sure if they are too too shy about the topic because it’s not the main background maybe so we have one please uh um go ahead I hello I’m aaya from cementos Marin and and I just wanted to
To know uh if is there any specific uh type of cement H more suitable not for this kind of applications or if uh Mr Joseph have test uh one specific uh with some special additives or or characteristics know of the sement to perform better that’s a a very good
Question uh well so uh no the answer is uh there is no requirement specific cement which is required for this application it can even be used with so-called green cements you know cements where you have a replacement of classical cement by some other type of fired clay type materials so you can you
Can use it with any um uh uh uh oxide based cement binder uh uh even with geopolymers which allows you to control the porosity that’s the key factor so the the the key of the technology there three elements of this technology which are important um one is the electron conductive
Material electron conductive Network this volumetric wire requires that the binder phas so the cement or whatever other things you can use can imagine you could use clay for that for instance um that one is hydrophobic so hydrophobic is the carbon black hydrophilic is the binder because you need this this uh
Opposition in order to create this volumetric wire uh uh the so that’s one uh uh parameter of it the second one is you need the poe space for the electrolyte uh and this PO space needs to be uh continuous so that it reaches this carbon black and uh the carbon
Black and um makes use of the surface so from that point of view if you think that through there’s any type of binder phase which uh allows you to control those two things Hydro Felicity on the one side hydro and the connected pore space can be used for that type of
Application okay thank you you’re welcome thank you very much for the question so I think there is time for for one more question okay maybe when I take the chance again um I was wondering what will be the next uh steps like the next projects ahead you mentioned there will be now
The more bigger scales and Engineering part but can you say any specific um topic you are focusing on or is it very open no no no no no so uh I have more questions than answers right you know that’s the uh the the work of a of a scientist um
So we on the one side we U right now we are developing these prototypes for colum for instance right but what we want to launch uh over the so one area where we would like to go is to make this a technology for the global South
Because we need to be all aware that um Germany um um Austria Europe uh the United States uh will be able to make the energy transition but what about technology for the global South in order to achieve this here so we want to launch actually a competition give before um to call
Upon people and their creativity to to uh produce uh structures sort of these batteries so the equivalent of a 12vt battery and the reason for that here is not only in voltage but also in in in uh in current um the reason for that is that this become sort of the elementary
Building block for the solutions I would say this intermittent storage here is not far off so this we would like to bring out to the the larger public in in our Labs what we are focusing on are um very specific uh uh applications so I’m most interested and I’m only one
Researcher of of quite a few is on the on the um uh electromagnetic induction phenomenon and to bring actually right now we are having basically DC charges in order to go to the self charging you need to have AC at high frequency so higher than normal frequency and um uh
And then you need to have some layer in between in order to make this happen so that’s sort of um on this application I’m working both on the theoretical one because a highly uh heterogeneous material as well as in the lab but having said this this is too
Big then just to leave it to MIT right so um this is the reason why I accept it to talk all to you you know to show you what we know and some people always think that you know when you get someone oh he only says that what he wants us to
Know no it’s really that what I know right now so um jump in get your hand into it we need this energy transition yes I’m uh I really appreciate a lot your your um way to to work on this and to share the information and also um regarding the
Where where to focus on the on the projects like regarding as I said Europe has very different chances maybe than than in different countries and this is very thoughtful to not only think about their own profits but also about projects which can really bring everything forward I mean this is why we
Meet here internationally so I’m I’m very glad you you joined and um yeah I hope in the I know in the audience I know some names and they are working on on maybe similar Fields so maybe this could uh be a little move first step and
I’m very happy to to share also the talk later and the information um maybe also in our Institute I can talk later to some um colleagues we mainly focused on thermal storage but nevertheless I think it’s very very important to bring forward there’s one thing I can already say now
Um I mean we talked before a little bit about the energy TCP tasks um I know that they are not so well known everywhere it’s just not easy to reach out to everyone but you mentioned the example with the diing and I know that there is one task 38 which is um only
Focused on Di um which is um I’m very sure until now they they do not use your solution cannot be but I think it would be nice if you connect so if you want we I can later just write an email to the the task leader and to you and maybe
There’s some nice information to share but at the end it’s about what is the best um um technology to use and the most sustainable and the easiest one so um I think this could be nice first step um yes and okay yeah thank you again I um I
Could ask some more questions but I think we have to stop now I still have to make the advertisement for the next uh seminar but um very happy that you joined thanks a lot for making it understandable for for the audience I mean at least for me and this is not my
Specific VI so many things thank you very much and Merry Christmas to you all please stay safe and healthy and make the energy transition happen