Company Sector: NATEP: helping SMEs innovate in aerospace Autumn 2020
Project Duration: 12 months
Funding Secured: ~£287k

Project Summary
The market of Urban Air Transport (UAT) and electrical energy storage have been growing strongly around the world for several years, with wide ranges of capabilities. The possibility of achieving higher charge & discharge rate and higher energy density is not only very interesting in different applications but has become a critical issue. This is particularly true for UAT and small commercial aircrafts that are introducing full or mostly electric models into their offerings, for which the weight & volume, reliability , higher discharge rate, recharge time and costs are still common concerns. Current popular aircraft batteries including Ni-Cd, Li-Ion and Lead-Acid, cannot completely meet the customer demands mainly due to their limited charge and discharge rate, limited energy density, safety and high costs. Their charge time varies between hours to 1 hour(best case scenario) and suffer from low discharge rate (typically-4C).

The Output
Advanced Battery Cell(ABC), is a highly innovative project aiming at developing and demonstrating the next-generation, fast charge/discharge and high capacity battery cell for civil aviation and Urban Air transport applications. ABC offers fast charging & discharging capability and will develop a solution significantly superior to the SoA. This affordable and safe ABC battery cell can deliver maximum discharge rate of 50-60C-rate and charge 55% of its overall capacity in 2 minutes (30C-rate). ABC will avoid the use of toxic materials. Battery efficiency, higher charge & discharge rate, performance and safety are the main improvements to the current SoA (state-of-the-art). The expected output will be an advanced aircraft battery cell(demonstrator), that will be a step-up and allows for commercialisation.

Inogrant Support
With the full grant writing support the university application in receiving funding from the NATEP competition was successful. Our team is unphased by complex technology areas and caters to the needs of all clients to translate their market leading project into a successful grant application.