New member introduction thread!
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Hello, I recently open sourced a novel ion exchange membrane recipe using a high speed grinder on water softener resin and mixing with PVC cement. They can be produced for less than $1 a square yard with properties similar to other name brand ion exchange membranes. You can find more details on the following GitHub https://github.com/Rowow1/Open-sourced-off-the-shelf-ion-exchange-membrane
There's a lot I would love to add to this community. I think the way traditional methodology for this technology needs to be reapproached. Firstly, by using my open sourced membrane recipe you can glue it directly into a PVC cell. Secondly, using foam core PVC sheets which are readily available and cheap from cabinet shops like imeca allows for complex flow cell designs to be easily and rapidly produced with a simple CNC router on various sizes. I have a flow cell design already I'll be glad to upload. I'm new here so sorry there's a lot I love to want to share and am doing things one thing at a time.
Welcome @saphnich and @rowow ! Membranes are definitely something relevant to our work here, to date we have avoided ion-exchange ones like Nafion due to the high cost but having a low-cost and open-source option would be great. I'll hop into the thread @rowow started on DIY membranes.
@rowow said in New member introduction thread!:
Secondly, using foam core PVC sheets which are readily available and cheap from cabinet shops like imeca allows for complex flow cell designs to be easily and rapidly produced with a simple CNC router on various sizes. I have a flow cell design already I'll be glad to upload.
This would be great to see! Feel free to start a thread in @general-discussion about your cell design. We had tossed around the idea of 2D-material milling/laser approaches to flow frames, but have stuck with 3D printed designs for now so that we can have internal geometries in the flow frames - 2D would certainly be easier and cheaper to make, but I was hesitant about the increased gasketing required/adhesives for sealing.
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Re: New member introduction thread!
Hi, I am vesko. Not very intuitive how to introduce myself, but I hope that by touching Al over the previous screen, this is the place. Anyway.
I am a retired electronic HW/SW engineer. Have all the time for my own projects. Independent living is my highest priority and I am ready and willing to put my time, money and efforts to achieve that goal and possibly help others along the way.
I bought a house in the boonies, I had a water well drilled. I am designing and implementing my oven silt filtration system that doesn’t need to buy and replace filters, chemicals etc. only if something breaks I need to repair/replace it. I installed solar system. Prefer water turbines, but it’s a much more complicated project, so solar is an imperfect but fast solution. Not very happy with the price of lithium batteries “lease” they call it purchase. It’s not a purchase / it’s a 10-15 years lease. So, looking forward to be battery independent -
Hello everybody, i'm Oliver from the Open Source Ecology Germany (OSEG) group and i'm no expert for redox flow batteries but i maintain another energy storage open hardware project named "ZAC+", that tries to utilize a zinc-air fuelcell and therefore at least has some "flow"-aspects too (e.g. typical problems with leakage
).Energy storage is to important to leave it alone in the hands of the monopolists and therefore i appreciate any OSH approach to research a kind of storage technology, no matter which one because all have their individual properties, advantages and use cases and it would be nice to cover more of them by open source hardware projects.
Therefore it makes a lot of sense to strengthen and extend our networks and secondly, the above mentioned different kinds of technology are not only useful in terms of pure technology, but instead aspects like replicateability can also have a strong value in our context, because if an experimental platform is easily accessible you can gain more people working with it and that means more menpower in running experimental test series. Which can lead at the end of the day to some groundbreaking innovations (fingers crossed).
I am new here and still trying to find my way into the workflow but so far i got nice support from Daniel and Kirk, so i am confident and looking forward for what comes next.
Here is a link to our project page at the OSEG wiki at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/Zn/O-Brennstoffzelle (with recent activities in an approach of citizen-science workshops, eg. at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/ZACplus_Citizen-Science_workshop_vom_21.03.2025_und_22.03.2025) and some other impressions can be seen at our YT-channel https://www.youtube.com/@ZACplusCitizen-SciencePr-un9nv/videos .
Best regards, Oliver
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Hello everybody, i'm Oliver from the Open Source Ecology Germany (OSEG) group and i'm no expert for redox flow batteries but i maintain another energy storage open hardware project named "ZAC+", that tries to utilize a zinc-air fuelcell and therefore at least has some "flow"-aspects too (e.g. typical problems with leakage
).Energy storage is to important to leave it alone in the hands of the monopolists and therefore i appreciate any OSH approach to research a kind of storage technology, no matter which one because all have their individual properties, advantages and use cases and it would be nice to cover more of them by open source hardware projects.
Therefore it makes a lot of sense to strengthen and extend our networks and secondly, the above mentioned different kinds of technology are not only useful in terms of pure technology, but instead aspects like replicateability can also have a strong value in our context, because if an experimental platform is easily accessible you can gain more people working with it and that means more menpower in running experimental test series. Which can lead at the end of the day to some groundbreaking innovations (fingers crossed).
I am new here and still trying to find my way into the workflow but so far i got nice support from Daniel and Kirk, so i am confident and looking forward for what comes next.
Here is a link to our project page at the OSEG wiki at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/Zn/O-Brennstoffzelle (with recent activities in an approach of citizen-science workshops, eg. at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/ZACplus_Citizen-Science_workshop_vom_21.03.2025_und_22.03.2025) and some other impressions can be seen at our YT-channel https://www.youtube.com/@ZACplusCitizen-SciencePr-un9nv/videos .
Best regards, Oliver
@oliver.schlueter Pleasure to meet you! I’m a contributor to OSE’s USA project! I love the work y’all have done over in Germany and it’ll be cool to see what we can all come up with here
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@oliver.schlueter Pleasure to meet you! I’m a contributor to OSE’s USA project! I love the work y’all have done over in Germany and it’ll be cool to see what we can all come up with here
@Saphnich hello Saphnich, very cool to meet here other people from OpenSourceEcology , and thanks for your nice words concerning our work here in Germany !
I also admire what you guys are doing there at OSE-US and it always strengthens our motivation and enthusiasm to see what has been already achieved there at the Factor E Farm.
I hope we can make such a good progress with the FBRC projects too and i'm glad to collaborate with you on that.
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Hello everybody, i'm Oliver from the Open Source Ecology Germany (OSEG) group and i'm no expert for redox flow batteries but i maintain another energy storage open hardware project named "ZAC+", that tries to utilize a zinc-air fuelcell and therefore at least has some "flow"-aspects too (e.g. typical problems with leakage
).Energy storage is to important to leave it alone in the hands of the monopolists and therefore i appreciate any OSH approach to research a kind of storage technology, no matter which one because all have their individual properties, advantages and use cases and it would be nice to cover more of them by open source hardware projects.
Therefore it makes a lot of sense to strengthen and extend our networks and secondly, the above mentioned different kinds of technology are not only useful in terms of pure technology, but instead aspects like replicateability can also have a strong value in our context, because if an experimental platform is easily accessible you can gain more people working with it and that means more menpower in running experimental test series. Which can lead at the end of the day to some groundbreaking innovations (fingers crossed).
I am new here and still trying to find my way into the workflow but so far i got nice support from Daniel and Kirk, so i am confident and looking forward for what comes next.
Here is a link to our project page at the OSEG wiki at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/Zn/O-Brennstoffzelle (with recent activities in an approach of citizen-science workshops, eg. at https://wiki.opensourceecology.de/ZACplus_Citizen-Science_workshop_vom_21.03.2025_und_22.03.2025) and some other impressions can be seen at our YT-channel https://www.youtube.com/@ZACplusCitizen-SciencePr-un9nv/videos .
Best regards, Oliver
@oliver.schlueter I went to the web links posted and though english is selected, the pages are not. Tried running through google translate and it sort of worked. Maybe there is a page setting that is wrong that is needed to show in english.
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@oliver.schlueter I went to the web links posted and though english is selected, the pages are not. Tried running through google translate and it sort of worked. Maybe there is a page setting that is wrong that is needed to show in english.
@Vorg Thanks for the hint, it indeed looks like the english translation is not working properly. I have forwardet the problem to our admin team and hope they can fix it. Meanwhile its a good workaround to use an external translation program like you did.
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Hi! I am Dr Nadezda Avanessova, I am a founder of Offshore Ville, which is basically a web platform for viewing a map of offshore wind projects, analysing the impact of climate change on them. My main expertise is operation an d maintenance of wind turbines. I was searching for DIY projects on Youtube (mostly robotics and computing) and this popped up - looks very promising and I would like to try and build it myself. It's not really my expertise so will probably take some time to understand, but I am grateful for this to exist! It will allow people take ownership of energy - another step away from greedy capitalism.
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Welcome @oliver.schlueter and @nadia_avva ! We are definitely indeed all about the ownership of energy and energy technologies here
you are in the right place! We'd love to connect our batteries to a small wind turbine (Piggott-style, probably) as soon as they are large enough... your and Oliver/OSE's wind experience could be very helpful! -
G'day, New member Steve Hickey here, keen to learn and share.
I'm EE (UQ Brisbane Au 1981!), started on batteries with Redflow in 2008. Spent some time at Sandia NL testing ZBM, then seconed in Albuqurque with fam for 3 years. Back in OZ spent 5 years as MRI R&D Engineer, then back to Redflow as CTO.
Over the years I've done a lot of modelling, testing, analysing of the ZB system.
I have set up a home lab, initially corrosion studies on electrode materials, and moving onto 200cm2 single cell system.
I'm very keen to learn about techniques and material sources.Cheers,
Steve -
Welcome @stevenhickey , great to have someone with as much experience as yourself here! I doubt you remember me but I think we crossed paths at IFBF in Brussels when I was doing my PhD a few years ago. I was/still am a big fan of Redflow systems, I think a lot of us were sorry to see the news about Redflow a while ago.
Great to hear that you've set up a home lab and are still pushing! Are you focused mostly on Zn-Br still?
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Hi all, we ask new members to please introduce yourselves here so we can get to know you and your interests!
It would be nice for us to also know:
- How did you find FBRC and this forum?
- What is your interest in flow batteries?
- How do you see yourself getting involved?
Welcome, and thanks for being here!
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Thanks Kirk, I appreciate the warm welcome! Very much enjoyed the IFBF in Brussels. Forgive the nerding, but being at the hotel where the Solvay conference was held, 1927 I believe - and much else.
One of the last activities I undertook at Redflow was Design Of Experiment for electrode formulation. I enlisted a team of Ugrads and performed a thousand AEO (Accelerated Electrode Oxidation) tests over several months. I've been fortunate to recieve a new coated Titanium foil material, and felt compelled to test it also. That was the motivation to convert my home workshop into a Lab.
It's always amused me the claims of indefinite electrode life -
G'day, New member Steve Hickey here, keen to learn and share.
I'm EE (UQ Brisbane Au 1981!), started on batteries with Redflow in 2008. Spent some time at Sandia NL testing ZBM, then seconed in Albuqurque with fam for 3 years. Back in OZ spent 5 years as MRI R&D Engineer, then back to Redflow as CTO.
Over the years I've done a lot of modelling, testing, analysing of the ZB system.
I have set up a home lab, initially corrosion studies on electrode materials, and moving onto 200cm2 single cell system.
I'm very keen to learn about techniques and material sources.Cheers,
Steve@StevenHickey Awesome to have you here! Very excited to see someone here with so much experience in flow batteries. Since you have so much experience in Zn-Br I wanted to ask if you have had any chance to test the Zn+Na sulfamate chemistry that was published not long ago. I tried it with some success, but had some stability issues https://chemisting.com/2026/03/23/zn-br-sulfamate-battery-stability/. Would love to hear your opinion on that subject.
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@StevenHickey Awesome to have you here! Very excited to see someone here with so much experience in flow batteries. Since you have so much experience in Zn-Br I wanted to ask if you have had any chance to test the Zn+Na sulfamate chemistry that was published not long ago. I tried it with some success, but had some stability issues https://chemisting.com/2026/03/23/zn-br-sulfamate-battery-stability/. Would love to hear your opinion on that subject.
@danielfp248 Hi Daniel, Thanks for the warm welcome! Yes, I have looked at the sulfamate paper and found it interesting. I did start my introduction with I'm an EE, and always see Chemistry through that lenz, I haven't had access to a lab for 2 years and only recently converted my home workshop into a 'lab' :). I do know with confidence that the dominant loss mechanism is polybromide diffusion via the separator and Ec>90% is feasible. So, locking up the free Br is important. Most of my operating experience is with MEP and MEM, and cost is their weakness.
You prompted me to look again at that paper. They use very high current density and report excellent Ec. Now I'm reading your report, and felt that with 1900 cm2, nominal capacity should be more like 9.5 kWh. But also they are only using 1 M ZnBr2 - Redflow would use 2-3 Molar.
I particularly liked your closing comment!
I've been testing alterative electrode materials for oxidation durability and have a cell in the 3D printer right now.
Cheers, Steve
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