Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee, USA.
By Dr Ilias Belharouak, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee, USA.
This talk will focus on the energy storage systems designated for mobility and electrification in relation with the R&D performed at the US. Department of Energy Battery Manufacturing Facility (BMF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). BMF receives funds from the US. Government and Industry to sponsor innovations in advanced battery materials research, battery manufacturing science and cell prototyping that enable low-cost, high-power and high-energy, safer and long-life cells capable of fast charging. Being one of the largest open access battery R&D facilities in the Unites States, the facility houses equipment and instrumentation necessary to research every step in the battery manufacturing process with an emphasis on advanced materials, electrode formulation chemistry, innovative coating technology, and high-performance electrode architectures. Resources include three coating lines, a dry room, and a cell assembly line for construction of large-format pouch cells. Collaborations across ORNL strengthen manufacturing science with state-of-the-art materials characterization including advanced microscopy and neutron sciences. BMF research bridges the gap between fundamental materials discovery and requirements for automotive cells with a primary emphasis on integrating next-generation active materials and novel processing methods.
Biography
Dr Ilias Belharouak is a Distinguished Scientist and the Group Leader of the Battery Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing in the Energy and Transportation Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Tennessee, USA. Dr Ilias also serves as a Professor of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education at the University of Tennessee Knoxville. At ORNL, Dr Ilias leads and oversees multidisciplinary R&D programs sponsored by the US. Department of Energy on works relating to battery energy storage, fuel cells and advanced manufacturing. Before joining ORNL in 2017, Dr Ilias was the Research Director and Founding Chief Scientist of the Electrochemical Energy Storage Center in the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), a member of Qatar Foundation (QF). In the meanwhile, Dr Ilias served as a Professor at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) for two years. During his 4-years international assignment in Qatar, Dr Ilias positioned the State of Qatar in the field of energy storage by building human capacity and establishing the state-of-the-art R&D infrastructure and programs from scratch, and by deploying the first lithium-ion battery (500-kWh) in a 200-kW solar plant in the Qatar Science and Technology Park. Before joining Qatar Foundation in 2013, Dr Ilias was a Material Scientist and Battery Expert in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Illinois, USA, between 2001-13. Dr Ilias has extensive experience working with multiple government agencies and industry in applying battery research for projects ranging from electric vehicles to grid storage applications. His research interests deal with high-power and high-energy lithium-ion batteries and beyond lithium-ion battery technology, battery materials design, electrolytes and additives, engineering and scale-up of battery components and cells, multi-scale range characterization of bulks and interfaces, postmortem and probing of the aging phenomena in batteries. Dr Ilias was recognized with several awards including the Qatar Foundation “Thanaa” Award, four R&D 100 innovation awards, two U.S. Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards, and the Pacesetter Award of Argonne National Laboratory. He published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers, 20 U.S. Patents and 5 books. He is currently the Editor of the Elsevier’s Journal of Power Sources, hold an h-index of 55 and was as invited more than 60-times around the globe. He received a PhD degree (1999) and Master’s degree (1996) in Materials Science and Solid-State Chemistry from the Institute for Solid State Chemistry (ICMCB), National Center for Scientific Research, Bordeaux 1 University, France.