I am currently COO of the pre-startup BioNa, developing battery-grade hard carbon from lignocellulosic residues for sodium-ion batteries. This work sits at DTU and represents the next chapter in a single coherent line: turning variable biomass residue into high-value structured carbon.
The problem
The energy transition needs enormous amounts of stationary storage to balance intermittent wind and solar. Lithium-ion batteries dominate, but lithium and cobalt carry real constraints: geographically concentrated supply, price volatility, and geopolitical exposure. This has driven serious interest in an alternative chemistry for large-scale storage where energy density matters less than cost and resource security.
Why sodium-ion
Sodium-ion batteries have emerged as a leading candidate. Sodium behaves chemically much like lithium and stores charge by a similar mechanism, but it is abundant, cheap, and evenly distributed around the world — no single region controls the supply. For grid storage, where weight is not the priority it is in a car, these advantages can outweigh sodium-ion’s lower energy density.
The bottleneck is the anode — and the anode is hard carbon
The critical material challenge in sodium-ion batteries is the anode. Graphite, which works well for lithium, stores sodium poorly. The leading solution is hard carbon — a disordered, non-graphitisable carbon full of nanoscale pores and defects. Its ability to store sodium depends intricately and sensitively on its microstructure: the spacing between its imperfect carbon layers, the size and closure of its internal pores, and the defects on its surfaces. Getting that microstructure right, consistently, at industrial scale, is the central problem the field is working on.
The approach
Researchers summarise the challenge as a chain: precursor → process → structure → performance. The starting material and how you heat it determine the carbon’s microstructure, which determines how well it stores sodium. Turning hard carbon from an “accidental product” into a designed, reproducible material means mastering that whole chain.
Why biomass — and why that is genuinely hard
Hard carbon can be made from many precursors, but biomass residues are among the most attractive: abundant, cheap, renewable, and aligned with a circular-economy logic. Cellulose, starch, and shell-derived materials are all active research precursors. The catch is consistency. Biomass is inherently variable — its ash content, mineral impurities (iron and others), and volatile fractions differ from batch to batch — and all of these strongly affect the quality of the resulting hard carbon.
The very heterogeneity that makes residues cheap makes them hard to turn into a reproducible, battery-grade material.
Why this background maps perfectly
This is the same problem, at a finer tolerance, that I spent a decade solving for fuels. Producing consistent output from variable biomass feedstock; understanding how ash and mineral content drive product quality; designing pyrolysis processes and selecting feedstocks accordingly — this is exactly the expertise hard-carbon manufacturing demands.
| Capability | How it maps to hard carbon |
|---|---|
| Deep experience converting heterogeneous biomass residues by pyrolysis | The exact synthesis route for hard carbon |
| Feedstock-selection instinct honed on real industrial variability | Ash content, mineral impurities, and volatility all drive hard-carbon quality |
| Certification, lifecycle and scale-up literacy | Increasingly decisive as the field moves from lab demonstrations toward industrial production roadmaps |
Current work
- Precursor selection & fractionation — Kraft lignin, wheat straw, forestry residues. Mapping chemical composition to carbon yield and electrochemical performance. DES extraction and LignoBoost precipitation protocols.
- Pyrolysis & carbonization — Two-stage thermal conversion: 400–600°C pre-carbonization to fix structure, then 1000–1600°C hard carbon generation under inert atmosphere. Target: >0.38 nm interlayer spacing with optimised nanopore volume for Na+ storage.
- Structural optimization — Surface passivation, nitrogen doping, and pore engineering to improve first-cycle coulombic efficiency and reversible capacity. Target: >300 mAh/g, ICE >85%.
The strategic layer: supply-chain sovereignty
Europe’s battery ambitions depend on securing materials it does not want to import from constrained or contested supply chains. Domestically-sourced, sustainable anode material — hard carbon made from European biomass residues — is therefore not only a scientific goal but an industrial-policy priority. It sits at the intersection of a hard materials problem and a strategic-autonomy problem, which is exactly the kind of coupled challenge my career has specialised in.