Advanced Energy Storage (AES)
Principal investigator of the division: Rubens Maciel Filho (Unicamp)

Generating national know-how in a critical area for decarbonization, the field of batteries and supercapacitors, was one of the main achievements of the AES program in the first 5 years of CINE. In fact, energy storage is at the heart of the energy transition, since the main growing renewable sources (wind and photovoltaics) generate energy intermittently, making their storage necessary.

In this context, the researchers of the division not only developed devices such as lithium-oxygen batteries, but also gained expertise in overcoming the challenges of producing batteries and supercapacitors at scale. The advances resulted in more than 60 scientific papers and 6 patents – one of which was licensed.

“Today, all these researchers form a critical mass of know-how to advance the area in Brazil through a more in-depth and critical look at energy storage, always attentive to national specificities”, says Gustavo Doubek, a co-principal investigator of the program . “Without this, the transition to a low-carbon economy could occur without criteria and at very high costs, with capital flowing to countries that dominate such technologies”, adds the scientist.

Furthermore, with funding and support from CINE, the program structured its laboratories, developed scientific collaborations and created the first pilot plant for manufacturing supercapacitors in Brazil, thus establishing a unique platform to advance technological frontiers in the area of energy storage.