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Energy Conversion and Storage: Recent Advances and Prospects

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A special issue of Batteries (ISSN 2313-0105). This special issue belongs to the section "Battery Mechanisms and Fundamental Electrochemistry Aspects".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2022) | Viewed by 6351

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Nitul Kakati

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Guest Editor

Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California Merced, 5200 Lake Rd, Merced, CA 95343, USA
Interests: PEMFC; DMFC; direct urea fuel cell; electrode materials for fuel cell and rechargeable batteries; water electrolysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Balasubramanian Viswanathan

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Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600036, India
Interests: catalysis; fuel cell; battery; supercapacitor; electrolysis
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The topic of energy conversion and storage is of great current relevance in providing a sustainable society. Essentially, this topic can cover the whole science, but the four molecules of relevance are carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, dinitrogen, and water. If one can manipulate these four molecules at will, many of the energy conversion and storage will become affordable. Even though this will form one of the main topics of focus for this Special Issue, other topics such as designing capacitor materials, and advances in the battery configurations will also be of interest. In addition, the conventional reactions such as ORR and OER will also receive attention in this Special Issue because of the possibility of unraveling the life process, which also depends on energy conversion and storage. New electrochemical devices such as sensors and others indicating communicating devices also depend on the method of energy conversion and storage, and hence, this Special Issue assumes timely relevance. This issue will include but not be limited to the following topics:

Batteries (electrode materials, battery electrochemistry, primary and secondary batteries);
Electrochemical capacitors (supercapacitors, interface science, electrical double layer);
Electrolysis (water, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen reduction).

Dr. Nitul Kakati
Prof. Dr. Balasubramanian Viswanathan
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Batteries is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

energy conversion and storage, renewable energy
electrode catalysis
battery
supercapacitor
electrolysis

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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28 pages, 19009 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Quantitative Design for the Battery Equalizing Charge/Discharge Controller of the Photovoltaic Energy Storage System

by Kuei-Hsiang Chao and Bing-Ze Huang

Batteries 2022, 8(12), 278; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries8120278 - 8 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1544

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop a photovoltaic module array with an energy storage system that has equalizing charge/discharge controls for regulating the power supply to the grid. Firstly, the boost converter is used in conjunction with maximum power point tracking (MPPT) such that the photovoltaic module array (PVMA) can output maximum power at any time. The battery equalizing charge/discharge architecture is composed of multiple sets of bidirectional buck–boost soft-switching converters in serial connection in order to achieve zero-voltage switching (ZVS) and zero-current switching (ZCS) so that when the charge/discharge power is above 150 W, the converter efficiency can be increased by 3%. The voltage and current signals from the battery are captured and input into the digital signal processor (DSP) to establish an equalizing charge/discharge control rule. For the output voltage control of the bidirectional buck–boost soft-switching converter, the dynamic mode is derived by first using the step response at chosen operating point, then quantitatively designing the controller parameters for the converter, so that the output voltage response can meet the pre-defined performance specifications. Finally, actual test results prove that the equalizing charge/discharge time of the quantitative design controller is shortened by more than 10% when compared to the traditional proportional-integral (P-I) controller regardless of charging or discharging; this also proves that the design of the photovoltaic module array with an energy storage system (ESS) that has equalizing charge/discharge controls is valid. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Conversion and Storage: Recent Advances and Prospects)

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19 pages, 3679 KiB

Open AccessFeature PaperArticle

Symmetric Supercapacitor Based on Nitrogen-Doped and Plasma-Functionalized 3D Graphene

by Kavitha Mulackampilly Joseph and Vesselin Shanov

Batteries 2022, 8(12), 258; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries8120258 - 28 Nov 2022

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 1823

Abstract

Nitrogen-doped, 3-dimensional graphene (N3DG), synthesized as a one-step thermal CVD process, was further functionalized with atmospheric pressure oxygen plasma. Electrodes were fabricated and tested based on the functionalized N3DG. Their characterization included scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Brunauer–Emmet–Teller (BET), and electrochemical measurements. The tested electrodes revealed a 208% increase in the specific capacitance compared to pristine 3D graphene electrodes in a three-electrode configuration. The performed doping and plasma treatment enabled an increase in the electrode‘s surface area by 4 times compared to pristine samples. Furthermore, the XPS results revealed the presence of nitrogen and oxygen functional groups in the doped and functionalized material. Symmetric supercapacitors assembled from the functionalized 3D graphene using aqueous and organic electrolytes were compared for electrochemical performance. The device with ionic electrolyte EMIMB₄ electrolyte exhibited a superior energy density of 54 Wh/kg and power density of 1224 W/kg. It also demonstrated a high-cyclic stability of 15,000 cycles with a capacitance retention of 107%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Conversion and Storage: Recent Advances and Prospects)

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Review

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24 pages, 10761 KiB

Open AccessReview

Polyaniline—Graphene Electrodes Prepared by Electropolymerization for High-Performance Capacitive Electrodes: A Brief Review

by Olena Okhay and Alexander Tkach

Batteries 2022, 8(10), 191; https://doi.org/10.3390/batteries8100191 - 17 Oct 2022

Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2206

Abstract

Both polyaniline (PANI) and graphene are widely studied for their application as capacitive electrodes in energy storage devices. However, although PANI can be easy synthesized, is of low cost and has a higher specific capacitance than graphene, pristine PANI electrodes do not present long-term stability due to their large volume changes during release/doping of the electrolyte ions and surface area reduction with charge-discharge cycling. That is why a combination of PANI with carbonaceous materials, especially conductive and high-surface-area graphene as well as more widely used reduced graphene oxide (rGO), provides an effective approach to solve these problems. At the same time, the electropolymerization process is one of the possible methods for synthesis of PANI composites with G or rGO as freestanding electrodes. Therefore, no binders or additives such as carbon black or active carbon need to be used to obtain PANI/rGO electrodes by electrochemical polymerization (EP), in contrast to similar electrodes prepared by the chemical oxidative polymerization method. Thus, in this paper, we review recent advances in EP synthesis of PANI/rGO nanocomposites as high-performance capacitive electrode materials, combining the advantages of both electrical double-layer capacitance of rGO and pseudocapacitance of PANI, which hence exhibit long cycle life and high specific energy. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy Conversion and Storage: Recent Advances and Prospects)

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