Prof Shukla delivers JW McBain Memorial Lecture at CSIR-NCL

PUNE: CSIR- National Chemical Laboratory (CSIR-NCL), Pune organised the 14th Prof JW McBain Memorial Lecture recently at its campus in the city. The lecture was given by Prof AK Shukla, honorary professor, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore on ‘Batteries for a sustainable world’.

Prof Shukla said that battery is a companion whose interests are worldwide and whose society has never-ending goals. He focused his talk on one of the major challenges before the world that is ‘energy’. 

He said, “The modern energy services are crucial to human well being and to the countries for economic development.” Yet globally over 1.3 billion people are living without access to electricity and 2.6 billion people are without clean cooking facilities. More than 95 per cent of these people are from either sub-Saharan Africa or the developing Asian countries and 84 per cent are from the rural areas.

Prof Shukla pointed that the energy demand has increased in India by 50 per cent during the period of 2010-2015 due to economic growth and increase in population. Major sources to meet the energy demand have been oil, natural gases and coal. The renewable energy sources including solar, wind and biomass contribute relatively less. 

“If we look at the Indian scenario, the amount of electricity generation has enhanced, still we are facing the energy poverty and it is a big challenge for all of us. The energy management has become the necessity of the time; hence the energy storage has become the central point. Electrical energy is most user-friendly, convenient and cleaner,” Shukla added. 

He talked about diverse ways of energy storage and its applications. The electrochemical energy storage involves batteries, ultra-capacitors, redox flow batteries. These are different batteries as they are modular, quicker, flexible and cost-effective. 

He said “The Sun has been radiating an enormous amount of energy at the present rate for nearly five billion years and it is estimated that it will continue to do it for another five billion years. There is a missing link of storage of solar energy which has to be addressed. For a constant energy supply, you have to depend on the energy storage devices such as batteries. The storage of the energy and its retrieval on demand will be crucial in future.”

Prof Shukla threw light upon the history of the batteries and its various types. He talked about the key issues associated with different batteries and the need for R&D efforts to mitigate these issues. He told about the desirable characteristics of the good battery. He explained the features of batteries in configurations of the ‘lead-acid’, ‘nickel-iron’, ‘iron-air’, ‘lithium-iron’, ‘lithium-sulfur’, ‘lithium-air’, ‘sodium-ion’, ‘nickel-zinc’ etc. 

Earlier, Dr PA Joy, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-NCL presented the welcome remarks and introduced the speaker, Prof AK Shukla. He also explained the background of the Prof JW McBain Memorial Lecture.