Dr Satyanarayanan Seshadri in the Applied Mechanics department of IIT Madras is working on a Zinc-air battery. For this, he is collaborating with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Australia, and the Swinburne University, Australia.
The development is currently at the proof-of-concept stage; Dr Seshadri seeks Rs 75 lakh, to be spent over three years, in doing further proof-of-concept studies and scale-up laboratory infrastructure.
He plans to develop a proof-of-concept at 3kW capacity “to power a super bike model, put together in the lab.”
The financial support will also enable increasing his team of battery researchers capable of working at a fundamental cell level, rather than assembling imported cells.
A strategy for energy storage for EV beyond Lithium-ion batteries are for energy security and sustainability, especially for countries like India Among the many candidate materials, metal air batteries are particularly attractive. Of these, Zinc and iron are very promising due to their abundance and equitable distribution on earth’s crust. “In this project, we are attempting to use known and well proven battery chemistry and address the mechanical and other packaging issues to develop a fillable battery using the zinc-air chemistry,” says Prof Seshadri.
Dr Satya Seshadri could be contacted at satya@iitm.ac.in and 9845068998
See also: CECRI scientists make progress with Sodium-ion battery
