Abstract
Advances in electrochemical energy storage systems are critical for vehicle electrification, renewable energy integration into the power grid, and electric aviation. The climate crisis has spurred an urgent need to accelerate innovation toward improved and safer utilization of high energy and power densities in rechargeable batteries, spanning the range from lithium-ion to advanced “post-lithium” battery chemistries. These complex and dynamical electrochemical systems are underpinned by coupled physical processes, including charge, heat, and mass transport, and their interplay with mechanical stresses, across electrochemically reactive interfaces and stochastic porous electrode architectures. The dynamically evolving nature of electrochemistry-coupled reactive transport processes, further compounded by the presence of physical heterogeneities spanning the hierarchy of temporal, spatial, and energy scales, gives rise to complex phenomenology, including interphases, bottlenecked transport, and local gradients. While empirical models have value, I will describe a scale-bridging modeling approach that instead emphasizes the mechanistic underpinnings of mesoscale interactions at reactive interfaces and electrodes. Physics-based models, when coupled with analytics and use-inspired strategies, enable novel design paradigms for electrochemical energy storage at scale.
About the Speaker
Partha P. Mukherjee is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. His prior appointments include Assistant Professor and Morris E. Foster Faculty Fellow of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (2012-2017), Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2009-2011), Director’s Research Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2008-2009), and Engineer at Fluent India (currently Ansys Inc., 1999-2003). He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University in 2007. His awards include Scialog Fellows’ recognition for advanced energy storage, University Faculty Scholar and Faculty Excellence for Early Career Research awards from Purdue University, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society Young Leaders Award, and invited presentations at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering symposium and Gordon Research Conference – Batteries, to name a few. His research interests are focused on mesoscale physics and stochastics of transport, electrochemistry, and materials interactions, including an emphasis on the broad spectrum of energy storage and conversion.
Host: Professor Kyle Smith
