Prof Ana Sobrido gave an invited seminar on electrospun flow battery electrodes and the use of sustainable precursors into the production of these electrode materials.

Prof Sobrido’s work on designing the next generation of redox flow batteries electrospinning is part of her UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship research programme.

Her group's research has led pioneering work on the use of biomass-waste to replace petrol-derived materials in flow battery electrodes. She says “If we want to move away from fossil fuels and rely only on renewables, the components of the next generation of energy storage technologies should not be petrol-derived.”

The group have therefore found ways of processing lignin and other biomass-waste products into freestanding materials, which can then be easily assembled into batteries. Using electrospinning and 3D-printing, they can manufacture these waste products into sustainable electrodes.

During the seminar, one of the students in attendance asked about the lack of reproducibility when working with biomass. Biomass is inherently different depending of where it comes from, and these differences in composition and structure can lead to some variability in performance. This leaves researchers with a decision to make – are they willing to compromise some degree of variability for a more sustainable device? Prof Sobrido and her group are considering different variabilities and different applications in order to answer this question.

During her trip, Prof Sobrido met Dr Antoni Forner Cuenca, Associate Professor and his research team at TU Eindhoven, as well as catching a seminar from Prof Johan Hjelm from Technical University of Denmark.