Overview

The growing global energy demand requires the development of new efficient technologies for energy conversion and storage with low environmental impact. Oxygen-based electrochemical systems, such as fuel cells and metal-air batteries, could be excellent devices to promote this energy transition towards renewable sources owing to a higher safety, greener production processes and greater recyclability.

More specifically, metal-air batteries, based on a metal oxidation and oxygen reduction reactions (ORRs), are an interesting technology that can overcome some important issues of the lithium batteries, the most widespread ones, namely safety hazards and low lithium availability.

However, some technical limitations concerning a slow oxygen reaction kinetics and the unsatisfying rechargeability, hinder their large-scale production and worsen the cell’s electrochemical performances. Hence, further research is needed in order to identify sustainable materials with advanced electrochemical properties.

In this context, the aim of this project is the production of new bio-inspired materials to use as air-cathodes in many oxygen-based electrochemical energy conversion devices. In particular, the research is focused on the preparation, characterization and testing of air-cathodes derived from wooden biomass. Wood is one of the most abundant biomaterials on Earth and has species-specific anatomical and chemical traits which may influence the properties of wood-derived carbonaceous materials. The produced wooden biomass with enhanced electrochemical performances could replace the highly expensive noble metals, typically used as catalysts for oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR/OER). For the cathode testing, fully eco-sustainable aluminum-air batteries are prepared and characterized.