SBIR Phase I: Purification of Electrochemical Graphite for Use as a Critical Material for U.S. Power Infrastructure

Award ID: 2538128

The broader/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is the advancement of domestic graphite anode material production, enabling a domestic lithium-ion battery supply chain. Lithium-ion batteries are the most widely used energy storage technology in our economy, critical for electric vehicles, grid energy storage, data center infrastructure for U.S. AI development, and the field power systems used throughout U.S. defense. Today, graphite is mined or synthesized from a byproduct of fossil fuel refinement. Both approaches are limited by feedstock, require high energy input, take months to produce, and require harsh purification techniques. The innovation utilizes industrial emissions as feedstock, enables production of anode material on the order of weeks, and can scale in a modular fashion with repeatable reactor design reducing deployment risk for customers and capital partners. The proposed development is to close a material property gap such that the final graphite anode material is a drop-in replacement for existing commercial grade anode materials. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will address whether the final graphite anode material, synthesized electrochemically through the innovation, can be made to have a specific surface area of
NSF Program Director: Vincent Lee