Battery Division Awards

Nominations Deadline: March 15, 2016

ECS recognizes outstanding technical achievements in electrochemistry and solid-state science and technology through its Honors & Awards program. There are many deserving members of the Battery Division among us and this is an opportunity to highlight their contributions.

We are currently accepting nominations for:

Battery Division Research Award: established in 1958 to encourage excellence in battery and fuel cell research, and to encourage publication in ECS journals.

Battery Division Technology Award: established in 1993 to encourage the development of battery and fuel cell technology, and to recognize significant achievements in this area.

Battery Division Student Research Award: established in 1979 to recognize promising young engineers and scientists in the field of electrochemical power sources.

Please review the full award criteria for distinct application requirements before making the nomination.

Take a look at the 2015 winners of Battery Division Awards:

• Dr. Martin Winter – Research
• Dr. Ashok Shukla – Technology
• Matteo Bianchini – Student Research

Nominate a colleague today!

We all know electrochemistry and solid state scientists are solving some of the biggest challenges today, but did you know their innovations are also improving traditional Valentine’s Day gifts around the world?

Share your love for science. Donate to ECS today!

Today, Feb. 11, 2016, marks the 165th birthday of one Thomas Edison.

While he may no longer be around for us to celebrate with, ECS is paying homage to one of our earliest members.

“Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”

– Thomas Edison, Harper’s Monthly (September 1932 edition)

ECS recognizes outstanding technical achievements in electrochemistry and solid-state science and technology through its Honors & Awards program. There are many deserving members of the Sensor Division among us and this is an opportunity to highlight their contributions.

We are currently accepting nominations for the Sensor Division Outstanding Achievement Award which was established in 1989 to recognize outstanding achievement in research and/or technical contributions to the field of sensors and to encourage work excellence in the field. The award consists of a scroll, and a $1,000 prize. The recipient is required to attend the Society meeting at which the award is given and present a lecture on topics for which the award is made and may receive (if required) some financial assistance to facilitate attendance.

Nomination Deadline: March 1, 2016

Please review the full award criteria before completing the application.

We encourage you to submit a nomination and acknowledge the hard work of your peers!

For most of history, fuel cells existed only as laboratory curiosities. As far back as 1839, the English scientist William Grove had the idea that the reactants of a battery could be gases fed into it from external tanks.

Since their humble beginnings, fuel cells have come a far to prove as a viable alternative to combustion. Currently, researchers at the University of Basel are studying how sunlight could split water into hydrogen and oxygen, creating a fuel cell that could produce clean energy from water.

(MORE: Read “Battery and Fuel Cell Technology.”)

Artificial photosynthesis has proven to be one of the most promising tools in producing clean, renewable resources. This process occurs when water is photo-electrochemically, with the aid of sunlight, separated into its H₂ and O₂ components.

Of the two reactions that occur, water oxidation typically provides researchers with the most hurdles to overcome. The new research works to develop an efficient, sustainable water oxidation catalyst.

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Metasensor’s Sensor-1 is a personal security system for your portable goods.

Home security systems are great for protecting valuables inside your home and stopping attempted burglaries, but those systems aren’t very practical when you travel with your precious, portable property.

Metasensor has developed its new Sensor-1, which acts as a portable security system – changing the way we protect our belongings and track objects in general.

This from Popular Science:

Sensor-1 is a small, octagonal disk that contains an accelerometer, a gyroscopic stabilizer, and a magnetometer, which work together to track the orientation of the device it’s attached to in three dimensions. They alert Sensor-1 if the object has been moved, and how. It also has three LED lights, a small siren, and Bluetooth connectivity.

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This May, join industry leaders like, Bio-Logic, Metrohm USA and more as an exhibitor at the 229th ECS Meeting in San Diego, CA. ECS meetings are a great place to network and meet customers—old and new.

The meeting will be held from May 29 – June 2 at the Hilton Bayfront and the San Diego Convention Center is expected to attract approximately 2,000 attendees. As an exhibitor, you will have the unique opportunity to present your services and products to these key constituents from industry, government and academia.

Exhibit space is filling up quickly!

As always, exhibit booths and sponsorship options will be allotted on a first come, first served basis. As the exhibit lineup continues to grow we highly recommend you lock in your exhibit location and sponsorship options now. To reserve a booth, or browse our sponsorship options, please complete pages 11-12 of our online exhibit and sponsorship brochure and return them by no later than Friday, March 11.

If you have any questions, please contact Casey Emilius, Meetings Coordinator, via email or phone (609) 737-1902 x 126.

As always, thank you for your support and we look forward to working with you in San Diego!

Morocco has officially opened the Noor I power plan — a massive solar power plant in the Sahara Desert that is poised to provide renewable energy to more than one million Moroccans.

Projects show the Noor I power plants with the capability of generating up to 160 megawatts of power. Thousands of solar panels cover an expansive piece of the desert, making it one of the world’s biggest solar thermal power plants.

But Morocco is well on the way to developing the single largest solar power production facility in the world, with Noor II and Noor III already underway.

This from NPR:

Morocco currently relies on imported sources for 97 percent of its energy consumption, according to the World Bank, which helped fund the Noor power plant project. Investing in renewable energy will make Morocco less reliant on those imports as well as reduce the nation’s long-term carbon emissions by millions of tons.

Read the full article.

Because of the climate in the Sahara Desert, the systems will work by capturing the sun’s energy as heat and converting water into steam, thus turning the turbines.

This differs from a traditional photovoltaic system, where the thermal system carries the ability to function without direct sunlight. Additionally, energy storage technologies are not necessary for evening use.

Sweden, a world leader in clean energy solutions, is make new innovations in harnessing the energy of wave power.

In an effort to combat the detrimental effects of climate change, countries around the world are looking for the next big thing in energy. In Sweden, part of that answer may be in buoys drifting in the ocean.

For the first time, Wave Energy Converters the Sotenäs Wave Power Plant on the Swedish West Coast is generating electricity and transporting it to the Swedish grid through buoys.

This from Seabased:

The connection of the six meter diameter buoys to the corresponding linear generator Wave Energy Converters on the seabed represents the final step in bringing each unit on line, together making up a system establishing many World firsts, including the world’s first multiple unit wave power plant and the world’s first subsea generator switchgear.

Read the full article.

Currently, Sweden is one of the global leader in clean energy solutions. Since the country’s oil crisis in the 1970s, the country has transitioned from an energy infrastructure from 70 percent dependency on oil to just a 20 percent dependency.

“This is a very significant achievement,” said Mats Leijon, CEO of Seabased. “We are very happy to have come this far and I wish to thank Fortum and the Swedish Energy Agency for their confidence and support all throughout this, sometimes tough, journey.”

Inspired by the principles of the sodium ion battery, Kyle Smith (right) is re-appropriating technology to make huge strides in water desalination.
Image: L. Brian Stauffer

Battery applications range from powering electronic devices to storing energy harvested from renewable sources, but batteries have a range of applications beyond the obvious. Now, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are taking existing battery technology and applying it to efforts in water desalination.

The researchers have published the open access article in the Journal of The Electrochemical Society.

“We are developing a device that will use the materials in batteries to take salt out of water with the smallest amount of energy that we can,” said Kyle Smith, ECS member and assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “One thing I’m excited about is that by publishing this paper, we’re introducing a new type of device to the battery community and to the desalination community.”

Water desalination technologies have flourished as water needs have grown globally. This could be linked to growing populations or drought. However, because of technical hurdles, wide-spread implementation of these technologies has been difficult. However, the new technologies developed could combat that issue by using electricity to draw charged salt ions out of the water.

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