Dot Ingredients, Auckland University of Technology (AUT) and Allegro Energy have jointly been awarded funding under New Zealand’s inaugural call for proposals under the Applied Doctorates Scheme.
The project, Sustainable Particle Surfactants for Next-Generation Microemulsion Flow Batteries, is for a three-year PhD project focused to advance green electrolyte chemistry for large-scale energy storage.
The challenge
Allegro’s Microemulsion Flow Batteries (MeFBs) deliver ground-breaking grid-scale energy storage to support the ever-increasing renewable energy generation capacity on today’s electricity grids. MeFBs store energy in an Allegro-proprietary liquid electrolyte. Today’s formulations rely on petrochemical surfactants and offer limited control over interfacial structure. The funded research tackles this by applying Dot Ingredients’ bio-derived surfactants – Celluspheres™ – to Allegro’s high performance electrolyte systems.
The project
The student will work across AUT, Dot Ingredients, and Allegro Energy in Newcastle, Australia, splitting time between AUT, Dot Ingredients, and embedded with Allegro in Newcastle, Australia. This structure ensures continuous translation from laboratory discovery to commercial application.
The grant includes a stipend, fees, and extensive professional development opportunities. Candidates are now being sought both within New Zealand and internationally.
What this means for Dot
The PhD candidate will be supervised by Associate Professor Jack Chen (our co-founder and Chief Scientist), with the industry supervisor being Dr Victor Yim (or Head of Product). The project will be hosted at AUT, using primarily AUT facilities, but also Dot and Allegro facilities where needed.
Dot Ingredients’ CEO, Michael Fielding said:
This grant accelerates our mission to scale up sustainable, high-performance particle-based surfactants. Our primary focus remains emulsifiers for personal care and cosmetics, but our ongoing research partnership with AUT allows us to jointly explore demanding industrial applications like this, where particle surfactants may unlock a performance edge, not just improve sustainability and cost.
