Event Focuses on Holistic Design, Innovations in Energy Storage
- Energy Sciences
The 14th Beyond Lithium-Ion Conference (BLI-XIV) will be hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) from July 23 to July 25, 2024 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in downtown Knoxville.
This meeting continues a series of symposia organized by a consortium of U.S. National Laboratories (including Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley, Pacific Northwest, SLAC, and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in addition to ORNL), IBM Research, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). It brings together scientists and engineers focused on transformational advances in scalable energy storage beyond the current state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries.
ORNL is honored to announce this year’s keynote speakers are Shirley Meng (University of Chicago and Argonne), Linda Nazar (University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada), and Valentino Cooper (ORNL).
BLI-XIV will focus on the holistic design of energy storage and conversion beyond lithium ion to achieve a sustainable future.
Sessions will focus on:
- Cutting-edge advances in solid-state lithium battery research
- The development of lithium-free batteries
- Multivalent battery systems
- Artificial Intelligence and machine learning methods for discovery
- Battery recycling
- Using electrochemistry to form new chemical bonds for carbon capture and utilization
At the end of each session, the chairs will assemble an open-format panel discussion of invited speakers to address lingering challenges in future research topics, bottlenecks in innovation and manufacturing, and how to tackle these challenges sustainably.
There will be a poster reception event starting at 6 p.m. on the night of Wednesday, July 24, at the Crowne Plaza. Any attendee can present a poster at the reception, which is sponsored by Group1, an engineered materials company from Austin, Texas, that is developing potassium-ion battery technology.
As part of the conference, attendees have the option of touring ORNL or taking a workshop on solid-state battery mechanics conducted by two ORNL researchers. The workshop will be run by Sergiy Kalnaus, a senior research and development staffer in the Multiphysics Modeling and Flow Group of ORNL's Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate, and Erik Herbert, leader of the Mechanical Properties and Mechanics Group in the Physical Sciences Directorate. Both the tour and the workshop will be held at 1:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 25. Please note, that U.S.-based attendees interested in touring ORNL must register by July 1, 2024. Non-U.S. registrants will need to register earlier, by June 1, 2024.
Registration, poster submission, and hotel reservations are available here, BLI-XIV. Registration closes on July 1. The conference package includes admission to the Wednesday evening reception and two meals per day, breakfast and lunch. The meals are sponsored by two companies, BioLogic, a French multinational that makes measurement instruments, and Vigor, a Houston company that makes gloveboxes and cleanroom equipment.
The cost for general attendees is $600 and $300 for students and post-doctoral researchers. There is a $50 cancellation fee. No refunds will be available after July 1.
Organizers have reserved a hotel block at the Crowne Plaza, with rooms priced at about half the standard rate.
