Salt battery for home use

Foto: Bart van Overbeeke. Jelle Houben defended his PhD thesis at the department of Applied Physics on March 9th. For several years now, energy storage in salt batteries has been advertised as an environmentally friendly concept that can help accelerate the heat transition. However, product development has only truly hit its stride since recently, says Jelle Houben, PhD candidate at TU/e. He investigated how to improve materials in order to increase the battery's energy storage capacity, and recently developed a salt battery - in collaboration with spin-off Cellcius - that will be used for real-world tests in residential homes. If it were up to mechanical engineer Jelle Houben, every household in the near future will have a device the size of a large refrigerator filled with salt tablets. The energy stored in this device can be used to heat our homes, and when the battery is empty, it can be recharged using renewable energy.