Energy Storage and Energy Conversion Systems

Due to the gradual depletion of fossil fuels, the development of renewable energy is getting more and more important. The special field "Energy Storage and Energy Conversion Systems" was initiated in July 2015 within Faculty Production Engineering at University Bremen in cooperation with Fraunhofer IFAM and consists of a group of young scientists, who particularly deal with electrochemical conversion from chemical to electric energy and furthermore develop efficient methods of energy storage. The scientific research covers various topics in experimental electrochemistry, whereby experiments are supported by multi-physics modelling.

The scientific work is focused on the development of batteries for stationary application, especially aqueous lithium-ion and metal-ion batteries. To increase the life-cycle and efficiency of batteries, new materials and concepts are being developed and tested, among which aqueous zinc-ion batteries and mixed-ion batteries, electrochemical ion-pumping for low temperature heat conversions, lithium recovery from brine, desalination of water and salinity gradient power generation.

In addition to the traditional Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS), which serves to characterise battery systems, the group developed new electroanalytical methods i.e. Differential Electrochemical Mass Spectroscopy (DEMS), Intermodulated Differential Immitance Spectroscopy(IDIS) and Dynamic Multi-Frequency Analysis (DMFA), which support the applied electrochemical researches.