2017 ChBE Awards Dinner

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McCormick Tribune Campus Center, (Pritzker Club), 3201 South State, Chicago, IL 60616
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The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering is hosting its annual awards dinner to recognize the excellence of the department's students, faculty, and alumni. Armour Alumnus, CEO and co-founder of All Cell Technologies LLC, Said Al-Hallaj (Ph.D ChE '99), will present his lecture "Distributed Energy Storage for Smart Grid Application" at the alumni address. Alexander Blankenheim (ChE, 4th year) will deliver the senior address.

Abstract

The cost of electricity from renewable energy sources has dropped significantly over the past few years and is getting closer to grid parity. This is prevalent in many regions that have plenty of solar and wind resources and rely heavily on imported conventional energy sources such as oil, natural gas, and coal. However, the growth of electricity generation from renewable energy is facing major challenges due to its intermittency and adverse impact on grid stability and robustness. Therefore, many utilities with high penetration of renewable energy generation have halted or delayed further development and imposed renewable energy curtailment regulations on existing resources.

Energy storage can address renewable energy intermittency, which is hindering its growth and its ability to displace fossil fuel-based conventional power sources. In addition, energy storage can play a significant role in ensuring grid infrastructure resiliency to overcome power interruptions due to infrastructure aging and the more frequent severe weather events related to climate change.

Speaker Bio

Said Al-Hallaj is the CEO and co-founder of All Cell Technologies LLC and a Visiting Research Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Dr. Al-Hallaj earned his B.Sc and M.Sc in Chemical Engineering from Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST) and a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Said co-authored “Hybrid Hydrogen Systems” and has published book chapters and over fifty peer-reviewed journal papers. He is also the co-inventor of numerous issued and pending patent applications in renewable energy, energy storage and conversion, and water desalination.

Said is a successful serial entrepreneur in the competitive energy storage industry.
In 2001, he co-founded AllCell Technologies, LLC, a spin-off from IIT and the first tenant in the IIT Tech Park. AllCell manufactures premium Li-ion batteries for renewable energy, transportation, and autonomous vehicle applications. AllCell customers include several Fortune 500 companies, and its batteries are sold to customers in over 15 countries worldwide recently founded NETenergy, a UIC technology transfer company, to commercialize a technology on thermal storage using phase change composites for cooling and heating applications. NETenergy won the top prize at the 2015 Clean Energy Challenge, 2nd place at the University of Chicago’s New Venture Challenge, and the Wells Fargo 2016 Innovation Incubator award co-administered by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.