PhD Defence by Anjali Achazhiyath Edathil " 3D Structuring of sustainable carbon electrodes for energy storage"

• Principal supervisor: Professor Stephan Sylvest Keller, DTU Nanolab
• Co-supervisor: Professor Kristoffer Almdal, DTU Chemistry
• Co-supervisor: Assistant Professor Babak Rezaei, DTU Nanolab

Examiners:

• Professor Thomas Willum Hansen, DTU
• Head of Section Sonia Dsoke, (KIT), Germany
• Professor Ann Mari Svensson, NTNU, Norway

Chairperson at defence:

• Senior Researcher Alice Bastos da Silva Fanta

Abstract:
As the world is moving towards decarbonization, electric vehicles and other clean energy technologies offer a path towards a sustainable future. Sustainable electrochemical energy storage (EES) devices such as supercapacitors and batteries will be essential to the transition to net-zero. However, they use mineral-intensive electrodes mined or manufactured from petroleum or coal products, which are both terrible for the environment.

One way of improving the sustainability of an energy storage device is to develop sustainable carbon electrodes.

Carbon, the fourth most abundant element in nature, plays a unique and dominant role in ecosystems and the human economy and is an integral part of these EES devices. To lower the environmental impact and production costs, while improving production efficiency, this dissertation focused on fabricating 3D structured free-standing electrodes from renewable resources such as biomass as a sustainable precursor.

Architecting the geometry of porous carbon electrodes at multiple length scales using 3D printing can substantially reduce several fabrication steps associated with carbon electrode fabrication and eliminate the requirement of additional inactive materials, thus making the fabrication of carbon electrodes cost-effective and less energy-consuming. This multiscale approach of designing biomass-derived 3D structured free-standing carbon electrodes may open substantial performance-enhancing capabilities for various EES devices such as supercapacitors. batteries, flow batteries, and fuel cells, making it the material for a truly sustainable energy storage.