Please join the NSERC CREATE ME2 and Waterloo Electrochemical Society Student Chapter (WatECS) for a webinar about the porescale modelling of electrochemical devices, with a focus on the structure-performance of lithiumion cathode materials and PEMFC catalyst layers. This talk will focus on the pore network approach to modelling electrodes at the pore scale, which offers the ability to study the structure-performance relationship in substantially less computational time than conventional computational approaches.
This webinar will be delivered by Jeff Gostick, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, at University of Waterloo. His presentation will outline the general approach for pore network modelling of the complex multiphysics involved in electrode reactions. Starting with the extraction of networks from tomograms (both traditional solid-void binary images as well as multiphase images of Li-ion cathodes consisting of void, active material, and binder), leading into the construction of accurate representations of the pore network structure, followed by a description of the mathematics of the physics being considered and discussion of some developments in implementing true multiphysics within the PNM framework.
The presentation will then introduce, via case studies, several of the recent accomplishments that his group have made using PNMs. Firstly, fuel cell catalyst layers result will be presented. This was conducted using networks obtained from pFIB-SEM serial sections, which produces images with 2nm voxel resolution. The incorporation of partitioning at the gas-ionomer interface and the role of ionomer thin films in ion conduction are both accessible within this model.
Next, Professor Gostick will discuss the application of PNMs to Li-ion cathodes. This work was done in collaboration with Electrochemical Innovation Lab at University College of London (UCL). Network models were extracted from 3-phase tomograms including void, active material, and the carbon binder phase, and validated against direct numerical simulation. Preliminary results will be shown highlighting the ability of PNMs to simulate transient discharge behavior in Li-ion.
The workshop will be delivered via Zoom. Please register to attend. You will receive a confirmation email and the Zoom link needed to access the webinar.
Biographical Sketch
Professor Jeff Gostick is an Associate Professor in Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo where he runs the Porous Materials Engineering & Analysis Lab. His PhD work focused on transport phenomena in the porous electrodes in hydrogen fuel cells. Upon completion of his PhD from the University of Waterloo in 2008 he did post-doctoral work at with the US Department of Energy at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, performing ‘catscan’ on porous materials.
He is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles and 3 book chapters. He is also a lead developer of the open source pore network modeling project OpenPNM (openpnm.org). Professor Gostick was recently named an Emerging Leader by the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering.