Argonne National Laboratory Receives $8.8 Million to Push Limits of Battery Technology

Never before has so much been invested into the research and development of battery technology, and the amount of time and money being put forth toward the advancement of said technology just received yet another significant increase.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has just been awarded another $8.8 million from the President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to go toward the construction of three battery research and development facilities: a Battery Prototype Cell Fabrication Facility, a Materials Production Scale-Up Facility and a Post-Test Analysis Facility. The laboratory’s research will focus on battery materials and batteries for hybrid electric vehicles, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and all other electric vehicles.

“These facilities will create a direct pipeline between materials researchers and battery developers,” said Dennis Dees, an electrochemical engineer at Argonne who will help oversee the Prototype Cell Fabrication Facility. “This will greatly reduce the time to get battery improvements into production.”

Dees said the laboratory will spend $1 million on equipment designed to improve the quality and evaluate the performance of newly fabricated cells.

Gregory Krumdick, principal systems engineer at Argonne, will lead the Materials Production Scale-Up Facility. He said the purpose of the facility is to develop manufacturing processes for producing advanced battery materials in sufficient quantity for industrial-scale testing. His arm of the project will receive $5.8 million of the ARRA award.

“Processes developed in the lab are not always suitable for large-scale production,” Krumdick said. “This facility will provide the means to scale up these processes, as well as to actually produce larger quantities of the materials for evaluation.”

This funding comes from the same $2.4 billion that has seen many battery developers and manufacturers become recipients of large sums of financing to further advance and improve battery technology.