Full article available from the Irish Times

A 3D-printed battery that could help tackle the global climate crisis by helping to store renewable energy that would otherwise be lost has been devised by QUB researchers Josh Bailey and Hugh O’Connor from the university’s school of chemistry and chemical engineering.

The battery that Queen’s University has developed is based on iron, which is much easier to source than the typically-relied-upon lithium. It can also be produced for about £75 (€88). The researchers’ 3D-printed battery hopes to address the issue of fossil fuels dominating how power systems run.

O’Connor realised how expensive it was to buy a flow battery cell during his PhD research so he decided to start 3D printing them, cutting costs from anything up to £3,000 (€3,527) to about £75. Bailey said 3D printing allowed them to come up with different shapes and designs that could be printed within a day with rapid prototyping.

Now, using the cell developed at Queen’s, scientists across the world are working to understand the major differences across laboratories by performing nominally identical tests, with the same cell and following well-defined protocols. The Queen’s researchers have led a large, international research study in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, bringing together over 35 research groups from across the globe, including teams at Harvard in the US and Cambridge in the UK.

“The work is helping to accelerate breakthroughs in long-duration energy storage, advance the transition away from fossil fuels and firmly position our team at Queen’s as leading the development of clean, reliable energy technologies,” Bailey said.