Advanced porous electrodes with flow channels for vanadium redox flow battery

Improving the overall energy efficiency by reducing pumping power and improving flow distribution of electrolyte, is a major challenge for developers of flow batteries. The use of suitable channels can improve flow distribution through the electrodes and reduce flow resistance, hence reducing the en...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of power sources Vol. 341; pp. 83 - 90
Main Authors Bhattarai, Arjun, Wai, Nyunt, Schweiss, Ruediger, Whitehead, Adam, Lim, Tuti M., Hng, Huey Hoon
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Elsevier B.V 15.02.2017
Subjects
Flow channels
Flow distribution
Flow-through
Porous electrodes
Vanadium redox flow battery
Porous electrodes
Vanadium redox flow battery
Flow channels
Flow-through
Flow distribution
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Summary:Improving the overall energy efficiency by reducing pumping power and improving flow distribution of electrolyte, is a major challenge for developers of flow batteries. The use of suitable channels can improve flow distribution through the electrodes and reduce flow resistance, hence reducing the energy consumption of the pumps. Although several studies of vanadium redox flow battery have proposed the use of bipolar plates with flow channels, similar to fuel cell designs, this paper presents the use of flow channels in the porous electrode as an alternative approach. Four types of electrodes with channels: rectangular open channel, interdigitated open cut channel, interdigitated circular poked channel and cross poked circular channels, are studied and compared with a conventional electrode without channels. Our study shows that interdigitated open channels can improve the overall energy efficiency up to 2.7% due to improvement in flow distribution and pump power reduction while interdigitated poked channel can improve up to 2.5% due to improvement in flow distribution. [Display omitted] •Different designs of flow channels in porous electrode of VRFB were studied.•Interdigitated channels (IDD-OC and IDD-CPC) increased overall energy efficiency.•Introduction of flow channels increased the discharge energy.•Rectangular open channels (ROC) resulted poor performance due to starvation.•Energy efficiency increment by pump power reduction in IDD-OC was up to 1%.
ISSN:0378-7753
1873-2755
DOI:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2016.11.113