Advanced Redox Flow Batteries for Stationary Electrical Energy Storage

This report describes the status of the advanced redox flow battery research being performed at Pacific Northwest National Laboratories for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Storage Systems Program. The Quarter 1 of FY2012 Milestone was completed on time. The milestone entails completion of evaluation and optimization of single cell components for the two advanced redox flow battery electrolyte chemistries recently developed at the lab, the all vanadium (V) mixed acid and V-Fe mixed acid solutions. All the single cell components to be used in future kW-scale stacks have been identified and optimized in this quarter, which include solution electrolyte, membrane or separator; carbon felt electrode and bi-polar plate. Varied electrochemical, chemical and physical evaluations were carried out to assist the component screening and optimization. The mechanisms of the battery capacity fading behavior for the all vanadium redox flow and the Fe/V battery were discovered, which allowed us to optimize the related cell operation parameters and continuously operate the system for more than three months without any capacity decay.