Catalonia Institute for Energy Research

IREC is a young research institute participated by the Catalan and Spanish governments, 3 universities, and several private companies from the energy sector. Within IREC, the Advanced Materials for Energy Department is equipped with new laboratories that incorporate state-of-the-art technologies and equipment for the synthesis and characterization of functional nanomaterials, the development of energy conversion, and storage devices and the evaluation of their performance. In particular, the team involved in this proposal has a very strong experience on the preparation of porous nanomaterials, their physical, chemical, electronic and thermal characterization, their use for the fabrication of energy storage devices including super-capacitors, and the test of these systems in different environmental conditions using climatic chambers. The main expertise of the research group that are relevant to this project include: (i) Design and engineering of porous electrode materials with controlled nanoscale parameters, (ii) characterization of thermal and charge transport properties in materials and devices; (iii) fabrication of energy storage devices by printing technologies and test of their properties and stability in a controlled atmosphere. The research group is involved in several national and international projects with the aim to develop materials and devices for harvesting energy in the form of heat and employ them for a number of applications.

Role in the project:

IREC will be involved in WP1, contributing to the dissemination and exploitation of the project results. WP2 Numerically optimizing the coupling wetting/drying and charging/discharging cycles. WP3 Producing particles and porous electrodes, treating their surfaces and characterizing them. WP5 assembling and testing a prototype and contributing to the definition of application scenarios.