Growing up in Wuhan, China, Deyang Qu initially wanted to study law because he believed it would allow him to help people. Instead, his parents, both chemistry professors, pressed him to study chemistry. Although reluctant at first, Qu soon discovered that science could improve people’s lives just as profoundly.
Today, Qu’s work is fueled by that discovery.
As the Johnson Controls Endowed Professor in Energy Storage Research and a distinguished professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he’s made extraordinary contributions to improving the performance of rechargeable batteries.
His research, which has attracted more than $10 million in federal funding, focuses on making batteries that are cheaper, longer lasting and easier to recycle. He’s already helped develop batteries that supported the emergence of start-stop technology, which reduces vehicle fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions by about 5%.
“I truly believe that the price of electric vehicles should be reduced to somewhere around $15,000,” Qu said. Affordable EVs, he said, combined with improvements in batteries, would allow many families to rely on cleaner electric vehicles for daily driving while using gasoline-powered vehicles for long-distance travel.
From industry to academia
As an undergraduate, Qu studied industrial chemistry at Wuhan University in China. While working as a college intern, Qu saw firsthand the environmental damage caused by cyanide used in industrial metal plating. “I had observed the 10 acres surrounding the plant where we worked,” he said. “It was ‘no man’s land.’ No grass, no rabbits, not even mosquitos!”
He later helped develop a less toxic alternative for his senior thesis. “It made me see that chemistry could damage the environment, but it also could solve environmental problems and help people as well,” he recalled.
After finishing his graduate studies at the University of Ottawa, Qu chose industry over academia. “I needed to support my family immediately, so I went into industry and my first job was in Toronto,” he said.
In Toronto, Qu worked for an international technology venture capital firm. He then moved Madison, where he joined Rayova — the third-largest battery company in the United States at the time. In the mid-2000’s, the company asked him to relocate to China. Not wanting to uproot his family, Qu left when he had the opportunity to join the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, which led to his position at UWM.
Recycling battery waste into fertilizer
Qu’s work at UWM doesn’t stop once a battery reaches the end of its life. In fact, some of his recent research begins there.
As electric vehicles become more common, millions of lithium-ion batteries will eventually need to be replaced. Finding an affordable way to recycle them is becoming an increasingly urgent challenge.
The problem is especially significant for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, which are widely used in electric cars, buses and delivery vehicles. Although they are durable and relatively inexpensive, LFPs contain few high-value materials, making conventional recycling an expensive prospect.
To combat that problem, Qu and his research team developed a process that extracts lithium from spent LFP batteries and converts the remaining waste products into fertilizer, which the U.S. largely imports today.
“Right now, it costs more to recycle the batteries than the value of what we can recover,” Qu said. “But if we can turn those elements into fertilizer, we not only reduce waste, we support agriculture in the U.S.”
The project has already demonstrated proof of concept and garnered interest from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service. But Qu and UWM research scientist Xiaoxiao Zhang have found that the U.S. isn’t yet producing enough battery waste for their method to scale up the amount of fertilizer the market would demand. When that day arrives, the researchers hope to demonstrate the fertilizer’s effectiveness and attract interest from manufacturers.
A catalyst for renewable energy
Qu believes batteries will play an equally important role in transforming the nation’s electrical grid.
“If you have renewable energy, you have to have energy storage,” he said. “Using batteries for energy storage so the grid can include more green sources, like solar, would have an impact on society just as important as enabling more electric vehicles.”
Where and how we acquire battery components is another route to bringing down costs. Graphite is a source of carbon used in EV battery anodes, but it’s relatively expensive and bought from other countries. That’s why Qu is also researching how to replace imported graphite with hemp, a renewable plant that could be supplied in the U.S.
No matter what research project Qu undertakes, he measures success in practical terms. Watching his students build meaningful careers in an essential field certainly ranks high. So does the moment when research from his lab becomes applied.
“My satisfaction comes from something more basic,” he said. “We find a new mechanism that can improve something, or can reduce the price, and then we can publish the information, and it can benefit the community that needs it.”
