Imagine a situation where you fill the fuel tank with metal powders and hydrogen, or light your house with batteries charged during the day with energy from the wind and the sun," says Sabrina Sartori, a visiting professor who works with Prof. Rashef Tana from the Department of Materials and Surfaces at the Weizmann Institute
"Imagine a situation where you fill the fuel tank with metal powders and hydrogen, or light your house using batteries charged during the day with energy from the wind and the sun," says Sabrina Sartori, a visiting professor who works with Prof. Rashef Tana from the Department of Materials and Surfaces at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Their collaboration was made possible thanks to a grant from the program for guest faculty awarded by the Feinberg Seminary Foundation.
Among her areas of research, Prof. Sartori - who lives in Norway - deals with materials for the production of batteries, which will be able to efficiently store energy generated in solar cells during the day. The work of Prof. Tana and his group caught her attention when she looked into possibilities for collaboration with a scientist from the institute. Prof. Sartori was particularly interested in the new methods developed by Prof. Tana for the production of inorganic nanotubes. Prof. Tana, on the other hand, saw the possibility of joint work as an opportunity to lead his group's research in new and promising directions.
"The goal is to develop a method for stationary storage, which will help in the alternating integration of solar energy and wind energy into the electricity grid," says Prof. Sartori. "For this use, lithium-ion batteries are not the best choice, because of their high cost and the lack of lithium. Sodium, unlike lithium, is relatively cheap and available all over the world." Despite this, the existing sodium batteries have a drawback: they operate at high temperatures (250 degrees Celsius and above), and require engineering planning that increases costs considerably. For this reason there is a huge incentive to develop new types of batteries based on sodium. One of the biggest scientific challenges in this field is the production of electrodes with extremely high efficiency.
The material from which the negative electrodes (anodes) in these batteries are made is graphite, but scientists are looking for alternative materials, which may improve the output. "With the help of Prof. Tana and the research student from his group, Gal Radovsky, we are trying to produce a new family of inorganic nanotubes, which will function as innovative anodes," explains Prof. Sartori. Prof. Tana and his team are pioneers in the field of nanostructures - or nanotubes - produced from inorganic compounds. One way in which they create these inorganic nanostructures is through compounds whose layers they create are not matched, but alternately placed in different structures and chemical compositions. Since the interactions between the layers are weak, sodium ions can be inserted between the layers, thus creating a kind of "shuttle" for transferring electricity.
According to Prof. Sartori, the goal is to create nanocomponents with high storage capacity and many charge cycles. "Although their production is challenging, we believe that inorganic nanostructures of this type may open the door to many applications, especially in the fields of energy and electricity. These studies may develop into a new field, and strengthen the cooperation between Israel and Norway in the years to come - cooperation for energy production Clean in the future," she says.
high energies
In another research track, Prof. Sartori investigates porous materials on a nanometric scale, which could perhaps be used to store hydrogen in batteries or hydrogen-powered vehicles. Prof. Sartori, born in Italy, moved to Norway in 2006, and was recently appointed an associate professor at the University of Oslo and the UNIK University Center. There she takes part in an international effort to design and produce special crystalline powders, which are able to store hydrogen at higher densities than the storage methods that exist today - based on compressed or liquid hydrogen. The goal, she said, is smaller fuel tanks, lower pressure and improved safety. In her research dealing with solid hydrogen compounds, called "hydrides", she tries to understand their structure, and especially the exact location of the hydrogen - a significant challenge, since hydrogen is the lightest of the atoms. In addition, Prof. Sartori serves as an associate researcher at the JEEP II nuclear reactor operating at the Norwegian Institute of Energy Technology, where she performs imaging experiments using neutrons.
Prof. Sartori's admission to the Weizmann Institute of Science was crowned with success. In addition to her work with Prof. Tana's team, she moderates the bi-weekly discussion group for postdoctoral researchers. As part of this, she holds a workshop dealing with career advancement, and moderates discussions on a variety of topics. During the last annual conference of the Israeli Chemical Society, she won an award on behalf of the journal Energy & Environmental Science. In her spare time, she writes a chapter for a future book dealing with nuclear characterization methods that are intended for the study of hydrogen in various materials.
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