WPI secures $1M hybrid car research award

Courtesy As part of the project funded by USABC, Wang and his team will use this reactor to make new cathode materials from materials recovered from used batteries.

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By Sam Bonacci

A team of researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has secured a $1 million contract that will fund their work on a process to reduce the cost of batteries for hybrid and electric cars.

The United States Advanced Battery Consortium LLC, a collaborative organization of FCA US LLC, Ford Motor Company and General Motors, awarded the contract to support further development and scale-up of a novel process for recycling lithium-ion batteries and the production of new plug-in hybrid electric vehicle battery cells using the recovered cathode material, according to WPI.

Batteries are the most costly component of electric and hybrid cars, said Yan Wang, developer of the process, who is director of WPI's Electrochemical Energy Laboratory. The 24-month contract will allow WPI to scale up and demonstrate the process that streamlines the costly recycling process for Li-ion batteries that play a key role in the latest hybrid and electric vehicles. In laboratory studies, Wang and his team have been able to recycle up to 80 percent of the key materials in a much less labor intensive process.

"If we can reduce the cost of lithium-ion batteries through this process, while also recovering and reusing large amounts of materials that are currently being thrown away, we can offer a value-driven path towards improved industry sustainability," he said.

The competitively bid contract award is 50 percent funded by the U.S. Department of Energy with the remaining balance being funded by WPI and a battery manufacturer.