Transportation Storage

Zeta Energy will address the main limitations of conventional lithium-sulfur batteries with an innovative battery design, overcoming the challenges of dendrite formation and polysulfide shuttle. Zeta Energy’s battery design features a three-dimensional lithium (Li) metal anode architecture and class of sulfurized carbon (SC) cathodes to produce stable and safe devices. Zeta Energy will build on these innovations to create a new anode with a high Li content that is also highly accessible and rechargeable and avoids dangerous Li dendrite formation.

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) will develop a holistic safety framework, combining material level to cell level testing and mechanistic modeling to evaluate the safety of next-generation battery systems. The framework will facilitate a bottom-up understanding of battery safety, enabling battery developers to de-risk promising chemistries from a safety perspective, reduce design iterations, and develop battery systems with a rigorous safety basis.

The University of Maryland (UMD) will increase the charge/discharge-rate capability, energy density, and operating temperature window of solid-state lithium metal batteries.

Tyfast Energy will develop a High sYmmetric PowER (HYPER) Battery that leverages a novel oxide-based anode and high conductivity electrolyte that has been demonstrated to perform well over a wide temperature range. This new HYPER combination of electrode material and electrolyte chemistry will enable a high-energy density, < 6 minutes ultrafast-charging battery with > 3,000 cycle life.

The Ohio State University will develop a high-power battery technology featuring a high entropy oxide (HEO) anode that can tolerate rapid charging while demonstrating longevity far beyond the current state-of-the-art lithium-ion cells. Ohio State will (1) address manufacturing challenges in achieving large-format, commercial-quality cells, (2) enable drop-in compatibility with existing battery components, and (3) optimize battery performance for cold temperatures.

Hinetics will develop and demonstrate a high-power density electric machine to enable electrified aircraft propulsion systems up to 10 MW and beyond. Hinetics’ technology uses a superconducting machine design that eliminates the need for cryogenic auxiliary systems yet maintains low total mass. The innovative concept features a sub-20 K Stirling-cycle cooler integrated with a low-loss rotor to maintain the SC coils below 30 K.

Sylvatex will use a low-cost, high-yield, and simplified continuous approach to synthesize lithium iron phosphate iron (LFP) based cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) where the reactants flow and mix continuously. Sylvatex’s proprietary nanomaterial platform has already demonstrated a significant breakthrough in synthesizing cathode materials for LIBs.

Pratt & Whitney will design a novel, high-efficiency hydrogen-power turbomachine for commercial aviation. The Hydrogen Steam Injected Intercooled Turbine Engine (HySIITE) concept is intended to eliminate carbon emissions and significantly reduce nitrous oxide (NOx) inflight emissions for commercial single-aisle aircraft. The HySIITE engine will burn hydrogen in a Brayton (thermodynamic) cycle engine and use steam injection to dramatically reduce NOx.

The University of Maryland (UMD) recently invented an elegant and scalable molecular engineering technique for fabricating a cellulose nanofiber (CNF)-based SSE that could overcome many of these problems. Unlike current SSEs, the CNF-based SSE uses natural materials, is easy to process, and is compatible with conventional coating processes. It can also be inexpensively manufactured due to its low material cost and paper-like roll-to-roll manufacturing, both as standalone electrolyte films and the electrolyte portion of solid-state cathodes for lithium ion and metallic lithium cells.