Black Diamond Structures
Black Diamond Structures’ Chief Technology Officer, Dr. Jerzy Gazda, presented highlights of the most recent developments in energy storage accruing from the company’s patented technology, MOLECULAR REBAR®, before the NaatBATT Energy Storage Innovation Summit. The presentation, “High performing Nano Materials for silicon and graphite anodes” offers more compelling evidence of the impact Black Diamond is having and will have on the future of energy storage. The presentation is attached below for viewing.
NAATBatt International is one of the world’s preeminent trade associations for advanced battery makers and users dedicated to supporting the commercialization of new electrochemical energy storage technology. The Energy Storage Innovation Summit, now in its third year, highlights 10 new technologies which must have the potential to transform the market and must currently be available for license or purchase.
Dr. Gazda’s presentation was followed by an address to the general NaatBATT membership by Black Diamond’s Chief Marketing officer, Dru Kefalos, on the history of Black Diamond Structures’ development of MOLECULAR REBAR and its ongoing importance to the battery industry globally. This presentation is also found attached.
Black Diamond Structures – Member Update – D Kefalos
Black Diamond Structures – Innovation Summit – Dr. Jerzy Gazda
Black Diamond Structures, a developer and manufacturer of innovative nanomaterial products and solutions for the lead acid and Li Ion battery market, recently announced the opening of its new advanced Battery Testing Laboratory.
The lab is one of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world and is a significant step in supporting the company’s global customers along with its ongoing work to provide the most comprehensive performance data on the effects of its proprietary technology, MOLECULAR REBAR®, when added to a battery’s active material.
Black Diamonds’ Chief Executive Officer, Dr. John Hacskaylo, explained, “We are making great strides in battery development by partnering with some of the largest manufacturers around the world. Using our highly advanced testing capabilities, together with the manufacturers we are building a vast base of scientific knowledge of battery performance when MOLECULAR REBAR® is introduced into the active material.”
Since its beginning in December of 2014, Black Diamond Structures has engaged with and is in various phases of testing and product commercialization with well over 100 lead acid battery manufacturers globally. A sizeable investment in testing capabilities has been an integral part in helping BDS keep up with the ever-increasing demand from its customers.
The new lab features 129 12-Volt testing channels and another 77 channels for testing below 12 Volts, allowing Black Diamond Structures to accelerate certain product development and solution optimization for key customers.
Commenting on the importance and scope of the new Battery Testing Lab, Dr. Jeremy Meyers, Director of R&D for Lead-Acid Batteries, explained “We’ve observed and documented the improvements brought to battery performance with MOLECULAR REBAR® in tens of thousands of batteries built on full-scale production lines around the world. To meet rapidly growing global customer demands, we have made significant investments in testing, automation, and data analysis to help our customers optimize our technology for their batteries.”
MOLECULAR REBAR® is a registered trademark of Molecular Rebar Design
BATTERY LAB PRESS RELEASE_3.1.2017_FINAL
Black Diamond Structures will exhibit and present its latest discoveries from its patented product, MOLECULAR REBAR, at one of the largest Lead acid battery showcases in the world – The 11th International Lead Battery Fair, April 26-28 in the Beijing International Convention Center.
The event is sponsored by the Battery Commerce Chamber International and hosts delegates from more than 50 countries representing one of the world’s largest gatherings of Lead Acid battery manufacturers, suppliers, and battery specialists since its beginnings in 1998.
Dru Kefalos, Black Diamond’s Chief Marketing Officer, commented “We have some exciting developments in advancing the science of lead acid batteries and their use in a variety of applications, from improved e-rickshaw performance to energy storage in general. Our product, Molecular Rebar, has been tested in virtually every geographic and climatic condition in the world. We are working with some of the world’s largest battery manufacturers to enhance performance and dramatically increase the reliability of the ‘workhorse’ of the battery industry.”
Tim Knaus, Vice President for Global Sales, said “We are delighted to have the opportunity to attend this prestigious event and have the opportunity to explain our most recent testing and reveal the importance of our nanomaterial technology and its importance to the lead acid battery community in China”.
Black Diamond extends an invitation to all attending this remarkable fair to come by its booth number 122 to allow us a chance to discuss your particular battery needs.
Visit their website at http://www.bcc-intl.org/english.htm for more information.
Black Diamond Structures has been invited to address the NAATBatt 2017 Annual Meeting & Conference held on March 14-16, 2017, at The Wigwam Resort in Litchfield Park, Arizona. NAATBatt International is one of the world’s preeminent trade associations for advanced battery makers and users dedicated to supporting the commercialization of new electrochemical energy storage technology.
Dru Kefalos, Chief Marketing Officer for the company, said “We are delighted to once again have the opportunity to discuss our latest innovations, particularly as they relate to the lithium ion battery industry. This is our 2nd opportunity to address the NAATbatt membership in as many years. We are excited to be one of the ten companies asked to be part of the Energy Storage Innovation Summit.”
The Energy Storage Innovation Summit, which is now in its third year. A committee of NAATBatt member firms each year selects 10 new technologies to highlight at the Summit, each of which must have the potential to transform the market and each of which must currently be available for license or purchase. No research projects or pie-in-the-sky allowed.
According to the NAATbatt program, “New Technologies Day also includes a panel of industry veterans talking about the impact of several new technologies on the battery business and a panel of Wall Street veterans talking about the capital markets’ view of advanced batteries in 2017. The day concludes with a talk about the future of battery technology beyond lithium-ion by two of the most distinguished battery scientists in the world and a Gala Dinner and industry awards ceremony.”
See the attached link for more information: http://naatbatt.org/naatbatt-2017-annual-meeting-conference/
As part of Black Diamond Structures’ ongoing promotion of its product solutions, based on MOLECULAR REBAR technology, the company supported the 8th International Battery Expo and Recycling Conference in Goa, India on January 9-11 at the Marriott Resort and Conference center.
This event, known as IBRX India – 2017, was an excellent platform for Black Diamond to discuss its latest technology and test data with a broad segment of the Indian battery manufacturer community. “We are intent on providing our nanomaterial solutions to a broad array of manufacturers here in India and around the world, giving them competitive advantage in this highly competitive market,” said Venkat Subramanian, Regional Sales Manager-South and West Asia for Black Diamond Structures.
Black Diamond Structures is a global leader in nanomaterial based solutions for the lead acid and lithium ion battery industries. The company’s unique technology, MOLECULAR REBAR, when added to a battery’s active material greatly enhances the mechanical and electrochemical properties, providing longer life, greater performance and significant value for our customers.
5 IBRX-Mohamed (Adoption of dCNT in lead acid batteries) ss1
For the second year in a row, Black Diamond Structures took an active role in the POWER ON trade show, one of the leading battery exhibition and technical conferences in India. The event, held January 6 – 8 in Bengaluru at the Karnataka Export Promotion Industrial Park, is part of an ongoing series of events to showcase products and services to the battery and energy storage industry in India and throughout the region.
Organized by Shivam Info and the Federation of Indian Small Scale Battery Associations, the show provided an excellent opportunity for Black Diamond Structures to reveal the latest developments on its work with battery manufacturers and exciting new data on battery performance, particularly in the E-rickshaw and Solar energy storage space.
“Black Diamond Structures has a very strong interest in working with India’s lead acid battery manufacturers. Our products have proven performance value as seen from independent test results in a variety of conditions the world over,” said Venkat Subramanian, Regional Sales Manager-South and West Asia, for Black Diamond. He added, “Black Diamond has established an ongoing relationship with Power On and others in Indian representing the battery manufacturing community. We believe our products provide enormous value and greatly enhanced performance in this highly competitive industry. Our “door is open” to all manufacturers for a discussion about our ability to advance the specific and unique needs of all.
BLACK DIAMOND STRUCTURES is a global leader in nanomaterial based solutions for the lead acid and lithium ion battery industries. Our unique technology, MOLECULAR REBAR, when added to a batteries active material greatly enhances the mechanical and electrochemical properties, providing longer life, greater performance and significant value for our customers.
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Mohamed Sharif, Application Development Engineer for Black Diamond Structures, introduced BDS products and solutions to this gathering of lead acid battery manufacturers and representatives from 200 battery related industries. Black Diamond’s focus for this event was to highlight products and solutions primarily for SLI and E-rickshaw batteries, particularly the company’s offering for smaller battery manufacturers.
BLACK DIAMOND STRUCTURES is a global leader in nanomaterial based solutions for the lead acid and lithium ion battery industries. Our unique technology, MOLECULAR REBAR, when added to a battery’s active material greatly enhanced the mechanical and electrochemical properties, providing longer life, greater performance and significant value for our customers.
trics, but most of those test results only give you a passing or a failing grade.
An acceptance test can be like taking the SAT to get into the college of your choice. All the admissions office is likely to look at is what the score was. However, if you’re developing a product, the way that you passed or failed is often revealed in the data. That insight can be invaluable if you can sort through it.
A mentor of mine from early in my career used to read every single test report from every single stack we tested. He impressed upon me the importance of reviewing and digging into performance test data. “Those reports are like gold,” he told me. He was so familiar with the way that stacks performed that he could ascribe personalities to them. He used to describe the way that a particular stack design “loved” water or had “healthy lungs.”
Each battery developer or OEM has their own set of (slightly different) test protocols. After a few validation trials, then, you’ll have a pretty good indication of how your battery will behave and start to get a sense of its “personality.” You just need to know how to look for the behavior. You probably won’t recognize the patterns until you’ve seen a lot of data.
By examining the performance trends, you can start to see evidence of the mechanisms at work. Mastery of the data that you have to get to satisfy customers will also make life better for you. In the end, learning from their tests will reduce the number of experiments that you have to perform for your own R&D.
Which brings us to the next point:
Battery testing is fine, but you’ll need to design some experiments.
“I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 things that do not work.”–Thomas Edison
After you get a sense of where your battery performs and where it doesn’t, you’re going to want to make it better. To do that, you’re going to need to change something about it. You could tweak your recipe or your design, make a full-size battery, and subject it to the testing protocols that your customers demand. That’s a remarkably inefficient way to do it, though.
Even if you haven’t yet figured out what you need to change in your battery and are compelled to follow an “Edisonian” approach, you’d like that to be as efficient as possible. Finding Edison’s “10,000 things that do not work” will take a lot less time if it takes a few hours to try each thing instead of a few days or weeks. An experimental design that accentuates the effect you’re trying to optimize will shorten that cycle time.
A proper experimental design might result in a cell that doesn’t resemble the battery under development. That’s ok if it helps you to isolate the phenomenon of interest. You also need to know enough, though, to make sure that you haven’t introduced phenomena that don’t exist in your full-scale battery. This is a good time to go back and re-visit the Pourbaix diagram (see previous blog artcle)
In a battery, the figure of merit on which you’ll be judged is a complex product of many different factors in your cell design. In the experiments you design to develop your next battery, you’d like to devise a figure of merit that is dependent on as few factors as possible. This will help in the interpretation of results and point you in the right direction for next steps to take.
If you have the capability to do some modeling, it’ll probably be worth it.
Unless you have a reductively simple system, multiple coupled processes occur at the same time in your battery. Charge transfer, dissolution, migration, diffusion, and other processes combine to dictate battery performance. Most of the time, you won’t be able to study each process independently.
Electrochemical systems are highly coupled because of the long-distance nature of coulombic attraction and electroneutrality. If you have a working electrode, you’re going to have to have a counter electrode. That counter electrode had better not be limiting. If you have a porous electrode, you’ll need to know its utilization. You’re going to want to know how your reaction rate varies down the channel. You’ll want to know how the fundamental processes interact in the microstructure of interest. That’s where modeling can be invaluable.
It’s unlikely that you’re going to want or need a transient model of your entire battery. You’ll often find that spreadsheet models and perhaps some basic PDE solvers will assist greatly in the analysis and quantification of your results.
Figure out how you’re going to manufacture it. The sooner you do it, the better.
This doesn’t matter for academic researchers who simply want to show a proof of concept. If you’re trying to develop a product, though, you need to know how much your system is going to cost.
You don’t want to lock yourself into a high-cost component that dictates the price of your system. It’s perhaps acceptable to use a component made with an expensive process for demonstration or prototyping purposes. Such expense is only acceptable if you know that you can lower its cost with appropriate capital investments in tooling or automation.
If you’re using a component that is too expensive and you don’t know how you’re going to make it in a way that meets your cost requirements to go to market, you should consider it a red flag. See if changes to the other components of your design could enable a broader set of specifications on your expensive component.
I hope that you’ve found this tutorial helpful. The Black Diamond Structures team has cooperated in the development of dozens of different batteries that vary in chemistry, design, and application, ensuring that our products are compatible with standard manufacturing processes, make for higher quality pastes, and deliver great value with no disruption to existing battery manufacturing processes.
If you’re interested in working with us to improve your battery system, please contact us at info@bd-structures.com.
For the second consecutive year as a participant in The Battery Show, one of the world’s premier events for the battery industry and manufacturers of advanced energy storage systems, Black Diamond Structures displayed its most recent data and test results, gathered from battery manufacturers around the globe, revealing the remarkable improvements in battery performance associated with the inclusion of MOLECULAR REBAR, the company’s proprietary nanomaterial technology, in the battery manufacturing process.
Discussing the importance of Black Diamond’s ongoing development of MOLECULAR REBAR and its promotion at The Battery Show and other major battery event around the world which showcase new technologies, Dru Kefalos, the company’s chief marketing officer said, “The Battery Show, and others like it around the world, provide an important forum for us to engage some of the world’s leading developers and manufacturers of lead acid and lithium ion batteries. It allows us the opportunity to meet, in a one-on-one setting, with a wide assortment of individual companies and explain the importance of our ongoing test and performance data – test data obtained from manufacturers employing Molecular Rebar in real world operating conditions. This data and our test protocols reveal that our product solutions will significantly elevate the performance of both lead acid and lithium ion batteries, ultimately creating tremendous value for our customers.”
Black Diamond Structures has extensive application data supporting its product performance statements and offers individual product solutions for manufacturers regardless of size or location.
Please visit blackdiam.wpengine.com to learn more.
