Page 29: of Marine News Magazine (July 2022)

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Feature

Batteries

Battery Innovation Center safety he sees the need to develop batteries in which ? res

Jonathan Angelo is Advanced Battery and explosions from “thermal runaway” can’t happen, or

Manufacturing Engineer and Education Coordinator the odds are drastically lowered. Newer designs will require at the Battery Innovation Center. He demonstrates fewer safety precautions, allowing more compact and easily the Calendering machine, a process to densify electrodes in order to increase a cell’s energy density. con? gured systems.

Standardization, Rampen said, will decrease costs. Mod- ular and scalable batteries will draw a wider variety of ship types. The building block concept will offer the ? exibility needed to use fewer types of batteries—but batteries that can be produced in large quantities—for an increasing number of vessels.

Another important goal is to develop shared production across differing transport industries and modes, e.g., ships and trucks, or even using the same battery modules. Final- ly, battery recycling is critical for keeping ESS sustainable.

“Current Direct” is a European battery project, funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 program, expect- ed to move to demonstration phase in 2023. It will deploy containerized battery blocks to repower harbor and river ves- sels. The goal is to replace, at designated harbor sites, a spent power pack with one fully charged, all within ? ve minutes.

Shaun White is Current Direct Project Manager and

Senior Project Manager at marine battery manufacturer

Spear Power Systems. White said that Current Direct is on schedule for its 2023 demo. He said battery research has focused on thermal and structural materials to evaluate ? ame and integrity tests.

White explained that maritime batteries have different utilization pro? les than automotive or grid-storage bat- teries, the two applications that have dominated battery development. Work is ongoing now to align battery capa- bilities with maritime demands. White said that if devel- opment work by Blackstone Resources, a CD partner, is successful those advances will increase energy density and lower some process costs by half.

Readers may be interested in reviewing Current Direct’s “Voyage Energy Planner,” a zero emission web tool devel- oped for inland waterways ? eets.

DOE’s big moves

The U.S. Department of Energy is making signi? cant moves to spark battery development. Utility-level energy storage is one of DOE’s Earthshot initiatives. As noted above, DOE will spend $7 billion over ? ve years on battery 30 | MN July 2022