February’s Monthly Seminar Series by CREATE PIs
Event Date: 07 Feb 2020 03:00 AM - 07 Feb 2020 04:00 AM
Event Venue: CREATE Theatrette
February’s Monthly Seminar Series by CREATE PIs:
Date: Friday 7 Feb 2020
Time: 11 am – 12 pm
Venue: CREATE Theatrette
CREATE Tower, Level 2 (to the left of the escalator), NUS University Town
(No registration is required)
The Monthly Seminar Series by CREATE PIs is a monthly fixture held on the first Friday of every month.
First move the air, then cool it
Electric fans as alternative or augmentation to air conditioning for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Prof Stefano Schiavon
Presentation Abstract
We spend most of our time in built spaces that substantially affect our health, well-being, and productivity. Conditioning the built environment has a large influence on climate change, most of which comes from the energy used to create indoor comfort. The need for cooling has been increasing globally, with most of it happening in tropical countries because of their economic and demographic growth. In this poster, we will show that in spite of this energy, buildings are registering high levels of thermal discomfort among their occupants, even in green and high performance buildings. How can we enhance occupant satisfaction without increasing buildings’ environmental impact even further? And better yet, could we reduce our reliance on air conditioning? Modern electric fans can be both an alternative to and augmentation of air conditioning. In a remarkable number of ways, they have the potential to simultaneously reduce energy use and increase thermal comfort.
Speaker’s Profile
Stefano Schiavon, PhD, is Associate Professor of Architecture at UC Berkeley and Associate Director of CEDR. Stefano’s research is focused on finding ways to reduce energy consumption in buildings while improving occupant health, well-being, and productivity. He received a PhD in Energy Engineering and an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy.
Improving the safety of Li-ion batteries
Prof Zhichuan (Jason) Xu
Presentation Abstract
Internal short circuit resulted from the growth of lithium dendrites on the low-potential anode is a major cause for the safety issues of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). For example, the denritite growth may occur on graphite anode during charging and thus most countries do not allow charging the personal mobile devices in house. Fully addressing the growth of lithium dendrites remains a great challenge. Here we introduce a double-anode approach to completely stop the growth of lithium dendrites. We introduce a second anode in LIBs which works as an anode only when there is the growth of lithium dendrites. After dendritic growth, Li+ can be taken by the second anode instead of further growing dendrites to reach the cathode which leads to a short circuit. We discuss the working principle and design a multiple-electrode cell to demonstrate the effectiveness. With the feature of stopping the growth of lithium dendrites, we anticipate that this approach will largely reduce the self-immolation incidence of EVs, cellphones, laptops and other devices that use LIBs.
Speaker’s Profile
Zhichuan is an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University. He received his PhD degree in Electroanalytical Chemistry at 2008 and B.S. degree in Chemistry at 2002 from Lanzhou University, China. His PhD training was received in Lanzhou University (2002-2004), Institute of Physics, CAS (2004-2005), and Brown University (2005-2007). Since 2007, he worked in State University of New York at Binghamton as a Research Associate and from 2009 he worked in Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Researcher. He was shortlisted as the finalist of 2012 NRF Fellowship. Dr. Xu has received several awards such as Chun-Tsung Endowment Outstanding Contribution Award - Excellent Scholar at 2018 and the Zhaowu Tian Prize for Energy Electrochemistry by International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) at 2019. Dr. Xu is a member of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), The Electrochemistry Society (ECS), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He was awarded Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) on Nov. 2017. He served as guest editors for Electrochimica Acta and Chemistry – A European Journal, and an associate editor for Nano-Micro Letters. He is also the development editor for Current Opinion in Electrochemistry and the president of ECS Singapore Section. Dr. Xu is a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics, Web of Science (2018 and 2019).