The winning concepts were:

• A molten air battery that uses a molten salt electrolyte at elevated temperature from Professor Stuart Licht at George Washington University

• A novel rechargeable zinc battery from the research group of Professors Paul Wright and James Evans from the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers have already founded a start-up company for its realization.

• Professor Patrik Johansson from the Chalmers University suggests the usd of abundant aluminum for a sustainable battery technology that directly addresses the need of low-cost concepts.

• The research group of Professor Xiangwu Zhang from North Carolina State University presents the concept of high-performance sodium-ion batteries that applies special electrode preparation methods.

The Open Innovation Contest, initiated by BASF at the beginning of February, aims to find ideas for the storage of energy from renewable energy sources. Sustainable technologies should make it possible to store power from the grid and feed power back into it.

The Open Innovation Contest on energy storage is coordinated by the BASF research unit “Process Research and Chemical Engineering.