Status: AWARD END DATE: 3/31/2020

Background:

The main goal of this project is to design and fabricate polymer-based flexible and safe lithium ion batteries able to operate under subsea conditions. Potential applications include powering devices in underwater vehicles, emergency outage backup power, and subsea drilling structural energy storage. The device should be reliable, safe and able to instantly provide power for subsea applications.

Several research groups will collaborate in this project, namely, Haleh Ardebili at the University of Houston, Rafael Verduzco at Rice University, and William Walker at NASA. All experimental and computational modeling efforts are dedicated to developing lithium ion batteries that can deliver effective power under subsea environment.

This work will pave the way for novel and improved energy storage solutions such as flexible batteries for subsea applications and expand their electrochemical performances, allowing the batteries to operate at temperatures as low as 0° Celsius. This device will reliably provide a safer environment for the exploration and production of oil in subsea conditions, and to deliver high- power for a range of subsea needs.

The specific goals of this project are (a) design and fabricate batteries that provide steady and long-term power and voltage at low temperature (UH); (b) Boost the performance of the battery through enhancing the battery materials properties through novel material designs and high resolution and rigorous characterization techniques (UH and Rice) (c) develop thermo-electrochemical model and conduct the simulation at low temperature to validate the experimental results (UH and NASA).