Hardware, design, and a learning community for building an open-hardware redox-flow battery from the Center for Unusual Collaborations
In the FAIR-Battery project, we aim to create an open-source electrochemical battery (FAIR = Findable + Accessible + Interoperable + Reproducible). We seek to present an open-hardware platform for a versatile battery technology and make the platform radically accessible: 1- by deliberately using low-cost and locally available materials suitable for local user groups, and 2- by setting up the education communities on top of the open-hardware design.
On this route, we strive to not only provide the necessary technical details for engineering and production but also incorporate the local constraints for actually adopting and using the technology. These constraints relate to language, availability of materials and expertise, maintenance capacity, or other locally varying conditions, which must be identified as part of the project. Our envisioned FAIR-Battery platform will track and seek to remove these constraints in each stage of the development by direct consultation with the user groups.
Table of contents:
This project is initiated by:
- Sanli Faez - Utrecht University
- Antoni Forner-Cuenca - Technical University of Eindhoven
- Peter Ngene - Utrecht University
- Maarten Voors - Wageningen University
- Yali Tang - Technical University of Eindhoven
- Stephanie Hobbis - Wageningen University
The following students are currently contributing to the project
- Catherine Doherty - University College Utrecht
- Nicolas Barker - Delft University of Technology
- Emre Burak Boz - Technical University of Eindhoven
- Josh Hauser - Utrecht University
FAIR-Battery is supported by a SPARK grant from the center for unusual collaborations.
🚧 This repository is always a work in progress and everyone is encouraged to help us build something useful to the many. 🚧
We are currently setting up the onboarding instructions for persistent contributors.
The GitHub issues and pull-request functions are currently not actively used for updates. These will be incorporated into the development procedures at a later stage
This project follows the all-contributors specification. Contributions of any kind are welcome!
If you wish to learn more about the project and/or join our learning community, drop an email to Sanli Faez
In our vision, to create a truly accessible FAIR-Battery, we need to form a community, at the same time that we collect and share the technical knowledge necessary for making and maintaining an operational device. Therefore, we are building our activities on three pillars
In this project, we will bring anthropologists, engineers, chemists, economists, and potential local users together to identify the barriers to developing a truly FAIR-battery and envision the first steps to removing some of these barriers in a follow-up project. In particular, we look for the answers to these questions:
- What range of energy storage capacities are required for the development of typical user groups and at what cost?
- Which battery technologies can potentially address these demands?
- Are the materials and technologies required for adopting the identified technologies available in the identified user groups? If not, which adjustments are needed?
- What is the missing know-how and expertise for kick-starting the local development of pilot projects?
To investigate these questions, together with an inclusive community, we will develop:
- A. a starters' kit (hardware and software)
- B. a lecture series for self-study
As of April 2024, we have produced and tested an initial battery design with a geometric cell area of 1 cm^2 with the possibility to scale up to 10 cm^2.
More detailed documentation and files can be found here
A standard procedure for testing FAIR-Batteries is currently being developed. The main purpose of this standardization is to make results from different contributing groups easy to compare. In order to achieve this, both software and hardware has been developed to fit the testing needs of redox-flow batteries.
Software for Battery Testing
We have developed an open-srouce python code that works on any major computer platform. You can check the installation guide and further documentation on readthedocs.
The software is a fork of the Labphew project: https://github.com/SanliFaez/labphew.
The current battery design can be tested and cycled using a MYSTAT, a small open-source potentiostat.