Job description
Do you want to develop sustainable energy storage solutions for the future? Do you want to use your curiosity, technical knowledge, and enthusiasm to contribute to the UN sustainability goals and create a sustainable world? In our multidisciplinary research team, we have a PhD vacancy in ‘Electrode development for acid-base flow batteries.’
Join our team to improve and design, in close cooperation with Aquabattery, an affordable, safe, and sustainable long-duration energy battery based on abundant materials. This innovative aqueous acid-base flow battery was awarded the most innovative battery concept at the European Sustainable Energy Innovation Award 2025.
Your Project
In the years to come, solar and wind will dominate global electricity production. But renewable energy supply is not constant - sunlight fades, wind slows. To safeguard 24/7 energy availability and flexibility in generation and supply, long-duration energy storage systems are essential. This allows society to store excess renewable energy for hours, days, or even seasons, and use it when needed. Long-duration energy storage systems are crucial to building a fully sustainable society and making green power available whenever we need it.
Flow batteries store electricity as chemical energy. The acid-base battery is a flow battery that stores excess energy in aqueous solutions of acid, base, and salt, each kept in a separate tank. To store and generate power, the solutions are pumped through a membrane stack. This technology currently relies on expensive metallic electrodes that generate H2 and O2 when NaOH is used as the electrode rinse solution. With our research team, you will explore alternative porous electrode materials and redox couples to improve performance, durability, and cost of acid-base technology.
You will investigate the kinetics of the relevant redox reactions on multiple electrode surfaces to unravel the relationship between chemical composition and performance, using a wide variety of electrochemical and analytical techniques, including X-ray diffraction, XPS, SEM-EDX, and in situ Raman and IR during electrocatalytic experiments. The performance of the selected materials will be investigated in the lab and in a pilot scale.
The research team
You will perform your PhD research in a multidisciplinary research team. The Electrocatalytic Synthesis and Electrochemical Interfaces (ESEI) is a vibrant research group focused on the fundamental and applied aspects of catalyzed reactions relevant to a clean, sustainable future. Our primary interest lies in the interface of heterogeneous catalysis and materials design, with a strong emphasis on elucidating the mechanism of (electro)catalytic reactions. The electrochemistry team's research is devoted to electrocatalysis and electro(catalytic)synthesis for sustainable processes and the production of high-value chemicals, such as fuels and organic molecules, from “waste” substrates, for example, carbon dioxide and biomass. The main aim is to understand, develop, and optimize electrochemical reactions under practical, relevant conditions to take a step further in the usage of electrochemistry at the industrial scale.
The research will be performed in close collaboration with the industrial partner AquaBattery (https://aquabattery.com). The research team is complemented with another PhD student working on the development of bipolar membranes for enhanced water splitting and recombination for energy storage using electrospinning and both PhD students will work closely together.