Snapshot
The entire world if I had abundant research funding:
My reality, getting rejected on grant apps and falling on icy parking lots in St. Louis:
Finished my postdoc
I’ve just finished a two-year postdoctoral appointment at a French national laboratory, where I embedded myself as an engineer among true chemists. I was a process/electrochemical engineer on an academic-industry joint project, doing some process simulation, prototyping, electrochemistry, electrolysis, a dab of homogeneous catalysis, etc. I learned a lot about carbon dioxide electrolysis and a bit about chemistry—I can run a quantitative NMR now! (but don’t ask me how that instrument works)
I’m proud of what I was able to accomplish there, though I can’t share the results openly at this time. I was part of a great team and am grateful for the opportunity and trust they placed in me. I can also kind of speak French now, but my vocabulary is probably at a four-year-old level with some chemistry and hardware terms thrown .
Deux croissants et 500 ml d’acide chlorhydrique, s’il vous plaît.
Starting my “independent” career
I have been “on the move” since I left the US to do my PhD in the UK starting in 2017. During that I’ve been trying to find ways I could work that would grant me some more autonomy to visit family for longer time periods and also start to pursue more of my own independent research themes. I’m also (quite) into open-source hardware which doesn’t align with a lot of conventional institutions, especially as you drift into more applied academic engineering.
When people ask me what I want to do, I say I have no desire at this time to jump through the requisite hoops needed to become a tenured academic professor. I also don’t want to work for Elon Musk (et al.). Of course there are options in between, and I flirted several times with tech incubators, university/VC-funded spinout pathways, and that whole space. I never bit the bullet, though, as I was never fully on board with that ecosystem.
Turns out, it’s as cheap as it’s ever been to do aqueous electrochemistry and device prototyping. Basic glassware, electrodes, a cheap but performant open-source potentiostat, hackerspace subscription, off-the-shelf chemicals, the right knowledge, and time—there’s a lot you can explore. At FBRC we are repeating academic studies in “amateur” laboratories (though—with professional talent, I will humbly add).
Still gotta eat and pay rent, though! Which, as a scientist, means asking for (and hopefully receiving) money—and maybe selling things? TBD. My head is still spinning as I figure out where I’m landing post-postdoc—currently navigating the bureaucracies of multiple nation-states as I sort that out.
I wrote a research update for our flow battery project
You can read it here!
Finding research funding
Writing research grants takes a lot of time and you don’t get most of them. It feels a bit futile, especially when you pour loads of time into something that doesn’t end up seeing the light of day. I am sharing some of these applications here, just to have as a timestamp and also show anyone who’s interested what I am trying to do here.
✅ Open Collective
Okay so this isn’t a research grant, but it is a way to fund research! We set up an Open Collective account to raise funds, though we are currently focused on spending down our NLnet grant and have not actively pushed crowdfunded research yet—it’s awesome to receive contributions from interested strangers on the internet!
✅ NLnet
Our FBRC project was very lucky to receive funding (20k EUR) from NLnet which so far has reimbursed consumables used in developing an open-source flow battery development kit. I’m extremely grateful that they believe in us and honored to be funded by a historic organization with deep roots in open source and technology commons!
Here’s an abridged version of the app:
Explain the project:
Our team is developing an open-source flow battery suitable for localized production that helps enable decentralized, decarbonized energy infrastructure. Notably, a key application is powering backup power to off-grid telecommunications equipment, and as such this project supports an open, inclusive internet.
Our first project is a development kit for flow batteries. This kit is the first iteration of our battery architecture and will act as seed from which to grow a global community to replicate and contribute to the project. We will buck the trend of closed-source, capital-intensive battery development efforts that rarely survive to see their technologies scale.
We use the zinc-iodide chemistry and we plan to include all-iron variants in the future. Our development involves benchtop electrochemistry and mechanical hardware design and prototyping.
The costs of iterating electrolyte chemistries and battery designs are high, and manufacturing several kits to run our preliminary workshops is not possible without external funding. NLnet funding would catalyze our early efforts to democratize a vital technology in a field historically only funded by investors for closed designs.
Previous involvement with other projects/orgs:
After setting up Flow Battery Research Collective (FBRC) with Open Collective Europe to obtain nonprofit status, we established an informal partnership with Prof Sanli Faez and his FAIR-Battery project hosted at Utrecht University which allowed us to plan for an trial educational flow battery workshop in 2024 to put a prototype version of the kit into the hands of practitioners. Sanli has been a great help and is crucial for providing academic legitimacy for the project, which is often needed to request samples of key battery components. Sanli has also recruited a part-time student to help validate our efforts and build documentation and is facilitating introductions to other partners, especially in the area of power electronics.
We at FBRC are contributing to the FAIR-Battery project by default as both FBRC and FAIR-Battery are open-source, aligned projects. FAIR-Battery’s scope is much larger and more interdisciplinary, however, while FBRC is currently focused exclusively on the battery chemistry and hardware. To be clear, FAIR-Battery repository is here: https://github.com/SanliFaez/FAIR-Battery and FBRC’s dev kit is here: https://codeberg.org/kirkpsmith/RFB-dev-kit, and they are separate financial entities.
We expect this collaborative relationship to grow and help both projects achieve success.
Compare with existing/historical efforts:
There are many open-source flow battery test cell designs in academic literature. Notwithstanding any technical shortcomings they may have, none meet the open hardware definition by OSHWA, or include a specific electrolyte formulation. There is rarely enough documentation to enable adequate repeatability, and the sparse documentation is aimed at academics, not a general audience. Compared to existing academic efforts, we aim to achieve an OSHW flow battery following OSHWA best practices (https://www.oshwa.org/sharing-best-practices/), namely an intense focus on accessible, organized documentation which ensures reproducibility.
A recent example which illustrates what a successful techinical outcome could look like for our kit is the level of detail in the LibreWater Acraea solar desalination/water purifier: https://codeberg.org/LibreWater/Acraea-Prototype. Their project also successfully mobilized development across several hacker/makerspaces, which we also hope to achieve.
Technical challenges you expect?
Technical challenges we anticipate are long-term cycling stability (beyond the timescale of a workshop), specifically related to zinc morphology/dendrite management on the negative electrode. The zinc-iodide chemistry addresses this in part with the wetting of a porous separator with triodide to react with dendrites approaching the separator. On the positive electrode, challenges include avoiding the precipitation of elemental iodine with appropriate charging limits and additives meant to complex iodine, such as triethylene glycol.
On the aspect of cell design, excellent fluid sealing performance is essential to contain the electrolyte and ensure safe operation, considering the chemical compatibility challenges of iodide-containing solutions. Deoxygenation of the electrolyte prior to testing may also be essential to successful performance, and doing this on a small scale in a workshop setting, without access to traditional chemistry lab equipment, will require deliberate consideration.
🚫 BRAINS Accelerator
No dice on this accelerator, which didn’t actually give any direct money or lab space, but could’ve offered good mentorship, likeminded peers, and introductions to funders. They were looking more for “FRO”-type pitches, that are a lot bigger scale than what we’re envisioning in the short term. Also I don’t think they really believed flow batteries were worth pursuing, so that didn’t help. Through their team though I learned of the concept of “BBN”-style research teams—independent, nimble, contract-funded research labs with autonomy and a specific focus—which I think could be a better mental framework to use when trying to imagine what a future research entity could encompass.
Here’s an abridged version of the app:
What specifically are you trying to do?
Include the program’s overall goal, the output(s) of your program (a new device, platform, methodology, etc.), and how those outputs will achieve the big goal. Explain this with absolutely no jargon.
Our program seeks to develop an open-source battery free of problematic minerals for reversibly storing renewable energy at the ~10 kWh scale. Think of free design plans for a Tesla Powerwall that doesn’t require lithium, flammable solvents, or gigafactory-scale capital investment to manufacture. Our approach would scale existing research on safe, water-based battery chemistries. To get to a 10 kWh device, we are first developing a benchtop kit that can be used as both a tool for both professional research and education/training. With our open-source development approach, we plan to nurture a distributed community of contributors to multiply the total amount of brainpower behind the effort, as well as to ensure the final battery design is practically useful. This kit (1) and global community (2) will propel our efforts towards a large single cell design (3) , and then incorporate these cells inside a practical battery for residential-scale storage (4), our ultimate goal.
What limitations in current knowledge or capabilities will your program address?
Impactful programs change how humanity does something, what we know, or our technological capabilities. Explain how we do things now as well as the limitations of today’s knowledge or capabilities.
Promising alternative battery chemistries developed at universities are typically patented and then licensed and/or spun out into VC-funded startups that then face the market dominance of Li-ion technology. Our program will initially focus on flow batteries, due to our existing knowledge and work (we’ll pursue other approaches in parallel). For flow batteries, companies have for decades been facing the same engineering challenges in scale-up from academic lab to commercial reality: managing shunt currents, effective stack sealing and flow distribution, increasing real-world round-trip efficiencies with transient charge/discharge behavior, electrolyte rebalancing, etc. These companies have been simultaneously reinventing the wheel in their own silos, rarely making it to market before closing down. They have not publicly shared their processes or results, and so the field has not learned from their mistakes.
This conventional approach has not worked for flow batteries, which were invented decades prior to Li-ion yet have failed to achieve commensurate commercial relevance. Our program will address, in the open, the practical engineering and system design challenges of flow batteries and other aqueous battery chemistries at scale. We will prioritize development of electrolyte formulations that have an honest chance of being cost-competitive, and place the results in public view.
Why do you think your approach could succeed? Why has nobody done this yet?
We don’t necessarily expect you to have a magical revelation or one weird trick, but we are looking for some unique insight. That insight could be a new, unique approach, a way to apply advances from another field, an observation about conditions or limitations that have changed, or something else.
Our program’s approach could succeed because: 1. we will tackle, in the open, practical engineering challenges of flow batteries that have been too applied for academic labs to focus on, increasing the number of eyes on the issue 2. with no investors, we will be able to remain focused on (less profitable, but more impactful) residential-scale systems instead of targeting large-scale systems first (no required “beachhead market”) 3. by producing public goods, we will motivate others to join our efforts in good faith, multiplying our efforts 4. it is now possible to do aqueous electrochemical research with low capital expenditure because of the advent of low-cost open-source hardware, like research-grade potentiostats that can now be had for 10x cheaper than before, as well as cost reductions in digital fabrication that allows electrochemical cell prototyping without a dedicated in-house machine shop No one has done this yet, perhaps because it’s not particularly lucrative to do difficult applied R&D and then give the results away for free, especially when the same efforts can command a high salary in industry.
Who are the “end-users” of your program’s output and who are the beneficiaries?
For example, the end-users of a better radiology tool are radiologists while the beneficiaries are patients. Bonus: What would they need to see to get excited about your program?
Beyond individuals with the know-how to fabricate their own battery based on our design, “end-users” of our open-source battery design would be commercial enterprises (existing or future) who would be free to manufacture the battery. In another sense, “end-users” of the actual battery would comprise renewable energy developers and installers who could now offer a safe, cheap, alternative battery technology, prosumers who buy and install their own systems, electric utilities/cooperatives and energy communities that seek to implement distributed energy storage schemes or Virtual Power Plants, etc. For any of the previously mentioned groups to get excited, they would need to see real-world performance data being gathered, a bill of materials with prices and sourceable components/materials, full engineering drawings, assembly guides, and so forth. For commercial enterprises to be interested in the program, they would need to be convinced that at the end of the program, there would be no remaining technical risk to undertake, the design would be manufacturable with standard industrial equipment, certified for sale to consumers, and that the initial capital outlay could be financed through a business loan.
If your program is wildly successful, how will the world be different? How do you know?
Flow batteries would finally become cheaper, more sustainable, safer alternatives to Li-ion systems for residential and other stationary applications to the point where they are treated as a standard home appliance due to the utility they provide, like a domestic hot water tank. Every household could have clean backup power in the event of a blackout, participate in the energy transition by stabilizing a power grid powered by intermittent renewables, and save money on their electricity bills by opting-in to energy trading schemes with their batteries, such as Virtual Power Plants. The massive uptake of distributed energy storage would ease requirements for large-scale centralized energy storage and transmission and distribution upgrades by cumbersome utilities and public entities, accelerating the energy transition. This would happen because of the massive existing demand for Li-ion batteries for residential applications by “prosumers,” who see the advantages and economic benefits provided by home batteries and can afford Li-ion systems at current prices. The battery designed by our program will offer similar performance to Li-ion at lower price, with less fire risk, and a more environmentally friendly composition, and so demand will increase, leading more building owners and operators to adopt this useful technology.
If your program is doesn’t succeed, what are the most likely reasons why? What assumptions are you making that are most likely to be wrong?
Assume your program is fully funded, and that’s not the reason.
Our program could fail for the following reasons: 1. We successfully build well-engineered flow battery systems but the price/performance tradeoffs vs. incumbent Li/Na-ion technology is not enough to matter for commercial enterprises to be interested in manufacturing our design 2. We fail to build an open-source community that allows for meaningful outside contributions to the project and so our progress is insufficient, or we make a viable design but no one knows about it 3. Flow battery technology, even when well-executed, just turns out to not perform well, and is therefore not appropriate for the application of stationary residential storage Our assumptions that are most likely to be wrong: 1. Flow batteries, at their peak performance, can compete economically with Li/Na-ion batteries for residential applications 2. An open-source community will form around our program that leads to meaningful outside contributions 3. Companies will want to manufacture a verified/certified, open-source, battery design that exists in the public domain
What makes this idea not a good fit for traditional research organizations (academic labs, startups, etc.)? Why does it need a coordinated research program?
The R&D our program wishes to undertake is too applied and not novel enough for most academic labs to carry out. Additionally, due to the growing market for energy storage, a university may prefer to privately capture the value created from such R&D by patenting it and/or spinning it out and taking equity in a startup, prohibiting an open-source approach. A startup would face similar challenges raising funds from investors, who would not appreciate giving away the R&D results from their investment to the public for free. A startup based on existing open-source hardware (much less yet-to-exist hardware) has difficulty stating their “competitive advantage” to conventional investors. Additionally, many startups have tried to scale-up and commercialize flow batteries over the previous decades, and many have failed. Some are still in business, but their products’ price/performance is not verified, nor do they realistically stand a chance against Li/Na-ion technology.
A coordinated research program is the best type of entity to undertake the engineering design challenges associated with scaling flow battery technology and then making those outputs into public goods suitable for commercial manufacturing.
🚫Astera Institute
Didn’t get this one either. Just finished a multi-round application process for this research residency in which I made it through two rounds but came up short in the end. This one stung a bit to have so close. It would’ve come with, speaking frankly, a good chunk of change. The institute is brand-new (as far as institutions go), and seems to be specifically looking for research misfits with bold ideas that don’t fit with conventional institutions and with a strict open-source policy (cue me, jumping up and down, shouting “that’s me!! pick me!!”).
Here’s an abridged version of the app:
Describe the problem you expect your residency to focus on and your proposed solution or direction for identifying a solution. Aim for a level of explanation that a smart college freshman could understand. (3000 characters max)
tl;dr—Residential-scale batteries are overlooked but offer serious benefits to consumers and the energy transition, Li-ion batteries aren’t the right tool for the job, and an open-source approach could get around the technological lock-in barrier posed by the Li-ion industry.
Energy storage is needed to stabilize an electrical grid powered by intermittent renewables. Many different technologies are being developed for this application, but batteries are the most popular and lithium-ion (Li-ion) is the most popular battery chemistry (by far).
Grid-connected storage can vary greatly in scale. A regional-scale battery of 1 GWh and a fleet of 100,000 residential batteries (each 10 kWh) both store the same amount of energy, and both can help stabilize a grid powered by intermittent renewables. The regional battery is the central hub of a system while the residential batteries are nodes in a decentralized network. There are certain benefits and paradigms that are favored and unlocked by the network of smaller batteries: improved grid resiliency, better use of rooftop solar, lower electrical bills (from time-of-use rates), backup power, peer-to-peer energy trading, virtual power plants, and so forth.
Right now, Li-ion batteries are the most popular option across installed stationary energy storage capacity at every scale. They are, however, technological square pegs in round holes. Li-ion was designed to be portable and energy-dense, but batteries that never move don’t need to be energy-dense. It is more important, for stationary use, that batteries are cheap, long-lasting, safe, and sustainable. A battery with these improved characteristics and trade-offs vs. Li-ion could catalyze the growth of the residential battery market and unlock its many benefits.
There are many alternative battery chemistries that could be superior for residential-scale applications. Li-ion’s current low price, however, blocks these technologies from reaching the market through a conventional route. Also, the residential market is highly regulated and from a business perspective, it requires less friction/overhead to sell one large regional battery than 100,000 residential ones. Residential storage is therefore grossly overlooked and useful technologies are blocked from reaching it.
To address this, I plan to spearhead development of an open-source battery free of problematic minerals for reversibly storing renewable energy at the ~10 kWh scale. Think of free design plans for a Tesla Powerwall that doesn’t require lithium, flammable solvents, or gigafactory-scale capital investment to manufacture. Our approach would scale existing research on water-based battery chemistries, focusing initially on flow batteries. The goal is to derisk, standardize, and certify—in the open—the systems engineering for this type and scale of battery to the level that existing commercial enterprises will want to manufacture it and consumers will be able to trust and afford it.
Why did you pick this problem to work on? What’s novel about it?
I am concerned about climate change and one way to address it is transitioning to a clean energy-powered economy. Energy storage, historically expensive and a difficult engineering problem, is a bottleneck to having an energy system powered by cheap, abundant, clean wind and solar power. I also believe that a decentralized energy system powered by distributed wind, solar, and energy storage can offer several benefits relative to the traditional, top-down, centralized approach of historical electrical grids. Cheap, safe, sustainable batteries that could be considered another standard home appliance could save consumers money, accelerate deployment of storage, and unlock a new era in electrical grids. Focusing on smaller batteries is a neglected area in part because it saves more money for consumers, empowers them, and generates less revenue for utilities and energy corporations (see rooftop vs. utility-scale PV).
What assumptions about the future of science and technology are baked into your proposal? What are the ways in which those assumptions are most likely to be wrong?
Assumption: Water-based batteries can compete economically with Li/Na-ion batteries for residential applications.
However: Size/weight/efficiency/lifetime/safety/recyclability tradeoffs between these technologies at scale may not be sufficient to motivate adoption. •Assumption: The energy transition will continue to be powered by additional installations of intermittent wind and solar.
However: Nuclear fission plants could see a resurgence in popularity
Assumption: Provided with public domain, certified plans and an economic case, enterprises will want to manufacture our design.
However: Industry may not accept open-source hardware as they have software, and may prefer traditional intellectual property protection like patents.Assumption: Regulatory frameworks and utilities will accept a decentralized energy grid.
However: Lobbying and existing business interests could block use cases for residential batteries, like the incentives for rooftop PV have been stifled in certain areas.
Why isn’t this problem likely to be adequately addressed (at this stage) by academia, government, or industry?
Academia/government labs: the applied systems engineering I propose to undertake is too applied for most labs to carry out. Additionally, most have a mandate to privately capture the value created from such R&D by patenting it and/or spinning it out and taking equity in a startup, prohibiting an open-source approach.
Startups: hard to raise funds from investors who would not like appreciate open-source approach vs. patents. Additionally, startups trying to scale-up and commercialize alternative battery chemistries must compete with the giants of Li/Na-ion technology like Panasonic and Samsung, which is extremely difficult.
Industry: open-source hardware has not yet caught on in industry. Also, researchers in energy storage can command a high salary in industry. Attempting a commercial open-source spinoff doesn’t make financial sense, especially to address a less lucrative market with stricter safety regulation than the commercial/utility battery sector.
Who do you envision using your residency’s outputs, and how?
“End-users” of our open-source battery design would be commercial enterprises (existing or future) who would be free to manufacture the battery for profit. An initial industry to approach is lead-acid manufacturers, who already have the capability to manufacture water-based batteries and are seeing Li-ion industry cut into their revenue streams.
“End-users” of the actual battery include renewable energy developers and installers who could then offer a safer, cheaper, alternative battery technology, “prosumers” and small businesses who buy and install their own systems, electric utilities/cooperatives and energy communities that seek to implement distributed energy storage schemes or Virtual Power Plants, etc.
A key part of the success of open-source technology is an active community of contributors, not just users. We also want to engage researchers from academia and industry in our development so that they can contribute to advancements in this technology.
Outlook
This is how research goes! I will continue to refine my rhetoric, and we will keep doing the research with FBRC—we are very lucky to have been able to get some funding already, the bottleneck now is mostly my own life logistics—I keep moving cities, as foreign postdocs do, so it’s hard to maintain my own prototyping and basic wet lab setup. That should iron out soon enough and we will see how much we can accomplish with 20k EUR!
Citation
@online{pollard_smith2025,
author = {Pollard Smith, Kirk},
title = {I’m an Independent Scientist Now!},
date = {2025-01-21},
url = {https://dualpower.supply/posts/independent-scientist/},
doi = {10.59350/87mp4-jgq35},
langid = {en}
}