Princeton NuEnergy was recently the recipient of a $4.375 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. This grant underscores PNE’s commitment to advancing the field of battery materials and technology, specifically focusing on advanced cathode active materials manufacturing and enhancing manufacturing competitiveness through groundbreaking technological progress.
This is the fourth award from DOE in recognition of PNE’s pursuit of excellence in battery innovation.
The grant under EERE’s Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office supports three strategic domains:
- Next-generation materials and manufacturing;
- Secure and sustainable materials;
- Energy technology manufacturing and workforce development.
This reinforces PNE’s pivotal role in driving transformative change in the energy landscape to increase domestic competitiveness and help build a clean, equitable energy economy.
“DOE funding is crucial to forming such a highly complementary team across the nation to work on a single target and create synergies that cannot be achieved with single-PI grants,” Jinyun “Jared” Liao, director of research & development at PNE and principal investigator of this project, said. “DOE funding is crucial to forming such a highly complementary team across the nation to work on a single target and create synergies that cannot be achieved with single-(principal investigator) grants.”
PNE, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Princeton University will collaborate closely to revolutionize advancements in cathode active materials manufacturing.
By leveraging PNE’s existing low-temperature plasma technology in direct recycling of lithium-ion batteries, the joint project led by PNE is aiming to develop a warm plasma-assisted process for cost-effective manufacturing of high-energy and high-quality CAMs.
This cutting-edge initiative is designed to yield a trifecta of benefits, enabling electric vehicles to achieve reduced battery pack mass and volume at a lower cost, improved battery safety standards and ultimately fostering the rapid adoption of commercial electric vehicles. In parallel, these transformative efforts align with broader objectives to reduce U.S. oil dependence and curb greenhouse gas emissions.
