'I'm striving to change the world's energy future'

University of Kansas faculty are striving to advance knowledge, interpret our world, solve problems, spark innovation, create beauty and catalyze imagination through their research, scholarship and creative activity. Through the “I Am Striving” series, we’ll learn more about what inspires KU researchers, as well as the goals and impact of their work.

Q&A with Lin Liu, associate professor of mechanical engineering

1. Explain your research as you would explain it to someone outside your field, such as your grandparents.

My research’s immediate focus is on energy storage and conversion. When I say that, a lot of people get lost. “What do you mean by energy storage or conversion?” Energy storage is when you put energy into the system, like batteries. I work a lot in battery devices, like lithium-ion batteries. For energy conversion devices, I mainly focus on fuel cells. Basically, we have one kind of chemical convert to electricity, or you have electricity convert to some chemical compound.

2. What does your research look like? What methods do you use?

The methods we're using can be put into two categories. We use both experiments and simulations to guide our research. Before we're doing anything physically, we use some physics-based model plus data to guide our experiments. That means we need to go through some fundamental physics and science principle using some governing equation to make predictions. We develop predictive models to guide our manufacturing. Then for the experimental part, to categorize the material we develop in our own lab, we assemble a prototype, then test the prototype. The model also can help us to understand how these things change over time, like performance degradation, how powerful these things could be, and how long they can last.

3. What inspires your research? Why are you passionate about this work?

If you really want me to go back, I remember the days when I was a young kid. I really enjoyed playing with remote control toys. That was fun as long as the battery lasted. At that time, I was curious about how I could run this toy forever. Then when I got a chance to go to graduate school, to choose what I was going to study to get my Ph.D., I signed up for electrochemistry because electrochemistry can help me understand the electrochemical reactions, which help me to build better batteries that can that can last longer, be more powerful and more affordable.

4. How does your research directly impact your field, society, Kansas and the world?

Everybody is interested in economic development. If you look at the historical data of economic development, it has a clear correlation with energy consumption. If we dig into those data, the trend is almost linear. That means if we want economic development, our energy consumption will increase, for example.

We talk about net zero or carbon neutral. In order to reach net zero, our energy consumption could be doubled. Electricity generation could be tripled in the next few decades. So where are we going to get all that energy? We've been using fossil fuel for many, many years. But while fossil fuel is a good energy source, it is not sustainable. If you think about the consequence of using fossil fuels, like climate change, the geopolitical conflicts — that is really something sad to see. So that's one reason for the work we've been doing. We are trying to find a way to fully utilize renewable energies, like the electricity you can generate from wind farms and solar farms. Currently, we are using a lot of energy generated from wind or solar farms, but clearly not enough. You always have one day that’s cloudy or the wind does not blow, so we need to have a certain kind of buffer or buffering in the system. In order to be more sustainable, or fully green, we need to have a certain kind of energy storage module.

If you think about energy storage modules in terms of energy, power rating and how fast you can get that energy. Batteries are a good option. A hydraulic dam is great, but it's going to take days or weeks to get the energy. So in terms of the balance, batteries provide the best options. That's one reason we focus on battery innovations. We believe if we can make a significant improvement in current battery technology and introduce a next-generation battery protocol, we could potentially change the world energy supply and energy future.

5. What is a recent study/example of work you’d like to share?

Our research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, NASA, local industry and Kansas farmers. The Kansas Soybean Commission has been supportive of one project for more than two years. We've be working on soybean batteries, where we're using Kansas farm-grown soybeans and soybean hulls to make battery materials. So potentially we could be using Kansas soybean byproducts to make next-generation batteries. That will be one of our near-term goals to achieve.

6. What do you hope are some of the outcomes of your research and work?

In the near term, I really want to provide our community with a predictive tool for battery design analysis. The work we've been doing can be very generic. We focused on certain kinds of rechargeable batteries, but again, the tool we are developing can be very generalizable and apply to many fields, like sensors and fuel cells.

In addition, I'm also thinking that during my career we want to introduce the next-generation rechargeable battery prototype. This battery first needs to be very affordable, because that's the most important. Second, it'll be powerful. It should last longer. Third, it will be safer. We hear about battery explosions. I don't want the next-generation rechargeable battery prototype to still suffer from those kinds of problems.

In the long term, I'm thinking about generating knowledge that can really promote electrochemistry engineering. We don't have that kind of discipline right now, but I really want to generate new knowledge that promotes interdisciplinary research in these areas. But most importantly, I want to educate as many future leaders as possible because they’re going to move forward and continue the important work we are doing here at KU.