Welcome to the FAIR-Battery Project

FAIR-Battery Logo

Welcome to the FAIR-Battery project!

On this website, we will provide a detailed explanation on how to make your own electro chemical battery!

But what is the FAIR-Battery project?

We aim to create an open-source electrochemical battery (FAIR = Findable + Accessible + Interoperable + Reproducible). A large community of people, from all over the world, are responsible for the work you will see while navigating this website. These people had the following vision of what this project was meant to be.

Project pillars

In our vision, to create a truly accessible FAIR-Battery, we need to form a community, at the same time that we collect and share the technical knowledge necessary for making and maintaining an operational device. Therefore, we are building our activities on three pillars

1- Learning together

In this interdisciplinary project, we identify the barriers to developing a truly FAIR-battery and envision the first steps to removing some of these barriers.

In particular, we look for the answers to these questions: - What range of energy storage capacities are required for the development of typical user groups and at what cost? - Which battery technologies can potentially address these demands? - Are the materials and technologies required for adopting the identified technologies available in the identified user groups? If not, which adjustments are needed? - What is the missing know-how and expertise for kick-starting the local development of pilot projects? - How to set up a distributed manufacturing and maintenance infrastructure for electricity storage?

2- Battery Hardware

As of April 2024, we have produced and tested an initial battery design with a geometric cell area of 1cm^2 with the possibility to scale up to 10 cm^2.

More detailed documentation and files can be found here

The current battery design has been tested using a MYSTAT, a small open-source potentiostat.

3- Coordination and Maintenance

A standard procedure for testing FAIR-Batteries is currently being developed. The main purpose of this standardization is to make results from different contributing groups easy to compare. In order to achieve this, both software and hardware has been developed to fit the testing needs of redox-flow batteries.

FAIR-Battery is meant to be:

• Open-source: all designs and data that is useful for further development will be shared.
• Scalable: both small and medium scale installations are supported and considered in new designs.
• Versatile: alternative chemistries or material resources will be accommodated as much as possible.

Site Navigation.

This website is meant as a guide for you to make your own battery with the provided kit. It’s full of documents, link, pages, etc.

This can all be a bit overwhelming, so for your process to go smoothly, we will now explain the different parts of this website and how you should navigate it.

Home:

This is the page you are currently on. Here we introduce you to the project and give you the relevant information to start your project.

FAIR-Battery project:

This is the page where all information on how to perform this project is given. Below you can see a short overview of what you can expect to find here.

• Main page: Explanation on what the project will look like and how the rest of this page is structured.

• Battery 101: Here we will explain some battery chemistry basics to get you along the way.

• Components: Here we will give an overview and explanation on the different parts you will be constructing.

• Build: Here you will be referred to another site, which gives a detailed explanation on how to construct the parts, described in the Build section.

• Testing: After building your battery, you will need to do some testing on it’s performance. This will not only make sure your battery is working correctly, but will provide insight into it’s potential.

• Troubleshooting: Have you run into any problems? In this section you will be provided with different ways to solve this. Is your problem not discussed? No worries, we will provide ways of getting into contact with others who have done the project.

• Beyond: Is your battery working, but you feel you could explore more? In this section we will provide some challenges for your to try. (Currently unavailable)

Community:

As said before, this project is an ongoing effort of many people. Which means, there is a lot more information out there. Want to deepen your understanding? On this page, we will guide you to that information.

Contributing to FAIR-Battery:

Did this project awaken something in you and do you want to become part of the effort. No worries, the more the better. On this page we will tell you how you can contribute to the project!

Main Contributors

• Daniel Fernandez Pinto, PhD.
• Kirk Smith, PhD.
• Prof. Sanli Faez.
• Joshua Hauser.