Probing and designing electrolyte solvation for lithium batteries
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Capturing anthropogenic carbon dioxide is essential to meet the climate targets.1 Despite the efforts to decarbonize the grid and transportation, some sectors remain difficult to decarbonize, and carbon capture is necessary to reach carbon neutrality.2 The incumbent technology for carbon capture utilizes amine sorbents to scrub CO2 using thermal stimuli suffers from high energy costs; 3 however, the thermodynamic penalty for CO2 capture and release is high and the heating of non-active water solvent with high heat capacity contribute to the high energy cost. As an alternative, electrochemical carbon capture has recently been gaining attention.2 Electrochemical activation prevents energy input into water heating, and also it is possible to achieve high efficiencies by tuning the absorption chemistry. Key prerequisites of candidate sorbents molecules include: 1) low thermodynamic energy cost; 2) facile reaction kinetics; 3) high stability upon oxidation and reduction; 4) preferred compatibility with water.2 In particular, attaining highly stable redox chemistries is a non-trivial challenge, as the redox cycle often involves free radicals. We propose the idea of deploying redox active amine molecules that have been widely deployed in batteries as redox mediators. Redox mediators are molecules that undergo redox cycles to facilitate sluggish reactions at the battery electrode interfaces.4 Because the stability of these chemistries have already been confirmed, and the reaction pathways are well-studied, we believe that they are highly promising candidates for electrochemical carbon capture. Through preliminary studies we have identified a molecule, 4-amino-TEMPO, that stably undergoes reduction and oxidation to capture and release CO2. There are two aspects of this molecule that makes it so promising: 1) it is a stable radical in its native form, making it stable upon repeated cycling; 2) it shows a remarkably small energy cost to capturing and releasing CO2 (Fig. 1). We plan to investigate the capture and release mechanism using a multitude of analytical techniques, including nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry (LC-MS). In addition, we plan to design a novel flow cell with symmetric reactions (Fig. 2). This should be a breakthrough because all other electrochemical cells for carbon capture have utilized a placeholder reaction on the counter electrode to balance the charge, which calls for additional materials and bulkier setups. We believe that our novel cell design and reaction chemistry will offer an avenue towards practical deployment of electrochemical carbon capture.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2023; ©2023 |
| Publication date | 2023; 2023 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Kim, Sang Cheol |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Cui, Yi, 1976- |
| Thesis advisor | Chueh, William |
| Thesis advisor | Prinz, F. B |
| Degree committee member | Chueh, William |
| Degree committee member | Prinz, F. B |
| Associated with | Stanford University, School of Engineering |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Materials Science and Engineering |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Sang Cheol Kim. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2023. |
| Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/qh055ky4165 |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2023 by Sang Cheol Kim
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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