(108b) Renewable Solvents to Replace Water in the Synthesis of Battery Materials

The current technologies for making metal oxide powders use either aqueous or gaseous processes. Aqueous processes involve water as solvent for metal salts to form precursor solutions. Such aqueous precursors are generally expensive for metal oxides that require high purity in which the water has to be purified. After the metal oxides are obtained, wastewater is generated and has to be treated before discharged or reused. The aqueous processes have serious environmental issues, but also are energy intensive.

Our lab has been engaged in using glycerol to replace water in the synthesis of metal oxides, especially those for use in Li-ion battery. Glycerol is a byproduct from biodiesel production. The U.S. biodiesel manufacturers generate about 1 billion pounds of glycerol yearly, which needs to be utilized for producing value added products. By using glycerol as a solvent, we found that it can replace water to prepare many metal oxide powders. The materials synthesis processes have the potential to significantly reduce manufacturing cost and alleviate the environmental issues with aqueous processes. In this talk, I will present some of our work in materials synthesis using glycerol as a solvent. In particular, I will introduce the work on making active cathode materials for the Li-ion battery.