Date of Award

12-14-2015

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Mechanical Engineering

First Advisor

Kevin Huang

Abstract

Cost-effective and large scale energy storage is essential for the growth of the future’s ‘‘green energy’’ infrastructure. Among the energy storage technologies currently being used, rechargeable batteries represent a class of advanced electrical energy storage (EES) mechanisms that can be valuable for the future renewable integration and smart grid. Rechargeable batteries have innumerous advantages over the conventional pumped hydro and compressed-air energy storage system. Now days, There are various types of rechargeable batteries available to work as an energy storage device in a smart grid but it still needs many breakthroughs to become commercially viable for stationary energy storage. First the development of a new type of battery requires a fundamental understanding of the physical, chemical, mechanical, and electrochemical phenomena involved in the system. By establishing a physics-based mathematical modeling makes it possible to understand the fundamental characteristics and prime criteria of the new battery. My master research project investigates and develops a physics based mathematical model of a novel rechargeable solid oxide metal-air redox battery (SOMARB) which combines a reversible solid oxide fuel cell (RSOFC) and hydrogen-steam chemical looping component. Here hydrogen-steam looping component functions as an “energy storage unit” (ESU) and RSOFC acts as an “electrical functioning unit”. One unique feature of this new type of storage battery is the ESU that is physically separated from RSOFC, allowing the battery to perform fast charging and discharging without concerning the problem arising from volume changes. The first objective of my master’s work is aimed to demonstrate the fundamental electrochemical result and the mass transfer characteristics of the battery through a physicsbased mathematical modeling. The second objective of the work is to evaluate the effects of battery’s configurational and operational parameters on the performance. The final objective is to establish a more rigorous model to simulate a complete charge and discharge cycle. In summary, a preliminary theoretical assessment and parametric optimization have been conducted in this study through COMSOL multiphysics modeling tool. Some of the important characteristics of the battery observed in the experiments have been confirmed by the computational results. A number of comparative parametric studies further indicate optimal parameters for a better battery design in the future.

Rights

© 2015, Md Ahsan Uddin

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