RICRI Research Seminar: Flames That Create Flames That Destroy

Traditionally central to energy conversion, combustion is now being reimagined as a powerful tool for manufacturing and recycling materials critical to energy storage and sustainability. Flame-based spray methods, for example, offer a continuous, rapid, and scalable route to synthesising and rejuvenating lithium-ion battery cathode materials. These processes can reduce production costs, enable efficient material recycling, and improve performance. Prof. DENG will highlight flame-assisted spray pyrolysis as a technique for controlling particle morphology and tailoring electrochemical properties, all within synthesis times orders of magnitude shorter than conventional routes. Yet, alongside these manufacturing advances come critical safety challenges, most notably thermal runaway, a failure mode that can trigger hazardous battery fires.

To address these concerns, Prof. DENG will introduce the newly developed Chemical Reaction Neural Network, a data-driven framework that uncovers reaction pathways and infers kinetic parameters directly from data, without requiring prior mechanistic knowledge. This approach offers a new window into the chemistry behind thermal runaway and other reactive phenomena, helping us better understand both the flames that create and the flames that destroy.