Hanna Dura

A comparative probabilistic economic analysis of selected stationary battery systems for grid applications

This Paper focuses on a comparative probabilistic economic comparison of sodium sulfur batteries (NaS), Lithium-Iron Phosphate batteries (LFP), Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries (VRB), Lead Acid batteries (PbA) and a Pumped Hydro Storage Plant (PHS). Two cases for a load leveling and peak shaving storage application were analyzed and compared. The comparison is based on a comprehensive literature review which showed remarkable deviations within most techno-economic values. This makes it difficult to assess the technologies by a deterministic approach. Therefore, a complementary probabilistic approach was developed in form of a Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS). The results show clearly that among batteries, PbA have the best cost performance followed by NaS and VRB. LFP has the highest costs within all scenarios. However, PHS is the most cost efficient technology for load leveling. In the case of peak shaving the battery costs decrease significantly due to lower initial investment costs.

Cost analysis of supercapacitor cell production

A life cycle costing (LCC) is to be performed complementary to the ongoing research on an enhanced supercapacitor pouch cell, in order to provide additional decision support on the best cell chemistry from the economic point of view. Due to the early stage of the project so far merely the production phase is considered. The detailed cost calculation method was chosen and complemented with a scale up using dimension analysis and analogy analysis, in order to be able to utilize this method since available data is either scarce or refers to laboratory scale. It was found that the researched cells are within the lower margin of costs reported in literature. Also the relative contribution of material and production costs as well as energy consumption was in the same range as stated in literature. Although these comparisons should be handled with care as they do not always refer to the exact same item. Further, we concluded that the developed approach provides a sound basis for a reproducible calculation of production costs for technologies at an early research stage.

Ecological assessment of nano-enabled supercapacitors for automotive applications

New materials on nano scale have the potential to overcome existing technical barriers and are one of the most promising key technologies to enable the decoupling of economic growth and resource consumption. Developing these innovative materials for industrial applications means facing a complex quality profile, which includes among others technical, economic, and ecological aspects. So far the two latter aspects are not sufficiently included in technology development, especially from a life cycle point of view. Supercapacitors are considered a promising option for electric energy storage in hybrid and full electric cars. In comparison with presently used lithium based electro chemical storage systems supercapacitors possess a high specific power, but a relatively low specific energy. Therefore, the goal of ongoing research is to develop a new generation of supercapacitors with high specific power and high specific energy. To reach this goal particularly nano materials are developed and tested on cell level. In the presented study the ecological implications (regarding known environmental effects) of carbon based nano materials are analysed using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Major attention is paid to efficiency gains of nano particle production due to scaling up of such processes from laboratory to industrial production scales. Furthermore, a developed approach will be displayed, how to assess the environmental impact of nano materials on an automotive system level over the whole life cycle.

AUTOSUPERCAP: Development of High Energy and High Power Density Supercapacitor Cells

The study focuses on the materials and small supercapacitor cells manufactured in the first period of AUTOSUPERCAP project. The supercapacitor cells presented in this paper are of the type of symmetrical, electrochemical double layer capacitor (EDLC) cells with organic electrolyte TEABF4 dissolved in propylene carbonate (PC) or acetonitrile (AN). Different active electrode materials have been investigated, including novel activated carbon, graphene and carbon nanotubes produced in this project, as well as combinations of these materials. Supercapacitor cells of 2–4 cm2 area were fabricated and tested in impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry and charge-discharge tests. Ragone plots of energy density against power density were constructed from the charge-discharge test data at different current densities. Furthermore, the results of a cost analysis are presented for the main types of supercapacitors investigated.