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“When more people make a breakthrough discovery or build a coalition for progress, it helps advance a vision of the world in which we all want to live.” That statement of philosophy reflects how UL Research Institutes (ULRI) employees have long approached their work.
Known for boundary-pushing research, ULRI, formerly known as Underwriters Laboratories, seeks to identify and mitigate threats to the environment, public health, and digital safety that are not well addressed elsewhere, and includes institutes focused on electrochemical, digital, chemical and fire hazards. Researchers there pursue innovative projects, often in partnership with distinguished academic and scientific organizations around the world. Here, we take a look at the minds behind the science at three ULRI institutes.
A long hunt for safer batteries
In 1999 American astronauts wanted to bring a digital camcorder on a space shuttle mission. But the camcorder was powered by a lithium-ion battery, a relatively new technology that hadn’t yet been approved for human spaceflight. To ensure the device wouldn’t introduce unknown hazards to the mission, Judy Jeevarajan, then a research scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, ran rigorous tests on the battery to make sure it was safe. In the process, she became the first person to certify a lithium-ion battery for human space flight.
A quarter-century later, lithium-ion batteries are everywhere, from our ubiquitous phones to implanted medical devices to satellites blinking at us in the night sky. And Jeevarajan, now vice president and executive director of the Electrochemical Safety Research Institute (ESRI) at ULRI, continues to lead the charge toward making them safe, wherever they’re used.
As much as she relished her time as a senior scientist at NASA, Jeevarajan joined ULRI in 2015, eager to embrace the organization’s broader safety goals. In 2021, she was tapped to lead ESRI, newly created with the mission to “advance safer energy storage through science.” She quickly built the institute to a staff of 21 chemical engineers, electrical engineers, fire engineering scientists, materials scientists, computer-modeling experts, and other specialists.
Located in a University of Houston technology park, the team collaborates with researchers in academia and industry to understand the workings of
different energy-storage systems—particularly advanced batteries and hydrogen—including what may cause them to break down and when they may become dangerous. The question that drives ESRI’s work, says Jeevarajan, is “what can we do to make the world a safer place, especially with respect to energy… and sustainability?”
It’s a question of particular pertinence now, as battery-powered devices are crucial in the move toward renewable energy. Lithium-ion batteries—light, powerful, rechargeable—are the most widely used. But if improperly manufactured or managed, they are subject to uncontrollable overheating known as thermal runaway, which can lead to disastrous fires, smoke, and chemical emissions.
Newer energy-storage alternatives could help mitigate these threats, says Dhevathi Rajan Rajagopalan Kannan, a research scientist at ESRI who is in charge of that project. Among the alternatives: sodium-ion batteries, which, given the abundance of sodium, are cheaper and more sustainable to produce. “What I’m trying to understand is whether the sodium-ion battery that is being used, or that is available, is safe or not,” he says. And it’s a race against time: “That is a fundamental understanding we are trying to get to before it gets more commercialized and mass-produced and adopted within the U.S.”
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The digital ecosystem is complex, interconnected, and not always trustworthy. Carloscastilla/Alamy Stock Photo
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