Energy Storage: Challenges and Opportunities

in an Evolving Lithium Economy

Michael M. Thackeray

Argonne Distinguished Fellow

Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division

Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA

Rechargeable lithium-ion batteries have had a profound and revolutionary impact on the energy storage market since their launch in commercial products by Sony Corporation in 1991; they have become significant in powering both small and large, high energy and high power applications - from smart cards, through implantable medical devices, portable communication equipment, hybrid- and all-electric vehicles to stationary energy storage for emergency back-up and for controlling fluctuations in the electrical grid.  The presentation provides a historical perspective of progress made in advancing and exploiting battery science and technology from a research curiosity to commercial reality, and highlights the challenges and opportunities of a lithium-based energy storage economy.

Biography

Dr Michael Thackeray is a Distinguished Fellow and senior scientist in the Electrochemical Energy Storage Department in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory. He received his PhD from The University of Cape Town, South Africa and studied as a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University in the early 1980s. He returned to South Africa to head the battery department at the CSIR before moving to Argonne in 1994. Between 2009 and 2014, he served as the Director of the U.S. Departments of Energy’s Energy Frontier Research Center: The Center for Electrical Energy Storage in a partnership between Argonne, Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Thackeray has contributed to the discovery of several new battery chemistries and to the design of materials for these systems, several of which have been licensed to industry worldwide. His research has been published widely and recognised by several national and international awards.