A commonplace chemical used in water treatment facilities has been repurposed for large-scale energy storage in a new battery design by researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The design provides a pathway to a safe, economical, water-based, flow battery made with Earth-abundant materials.
A new iron-based aqueous flow battery shows promise for grid energy storage applications. A commonplace chemical used in water treatment facilities has been repurposed for large-scale energy storage in a new battery design by researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
A new flow battery design achieves long life and capacity for grid energy storage from renewable fuels. A common food and medicine additive has shown it can boost the capacity and longevity of a next-generation flow battery design in a record-setting experiment.
The work on flow batteries is part of a large program at PNNL to develop and test new technologies for grid-scale energy storage that will be accelerated with the opening of PNNL’s Grid Storage Launchpad in 2024. The PNNL research team that developed this new battery design includes researchers with backgrounds in organic and chemical synthesis.
China’s first megawatt iron-chromium flow battery energy storage demonstration project, which can store 6,000 kWh of electricity for 6 hours, was successfully tested and was approved for commercial use on February 28, 2023, making it the largest of its kind in the world.
The larger the electrolyte supply tank, the more energy the flow battery can store. The aqueous iron (Fe) redox flow battery here captures energy in the form of electrons (e-) from renewable energy sources and stores it by changing the charge of iron in the flowing liquid electrolyte.