Brief discussion of the actual (electro)chemical reactions going on in this cell for anyone interested

@kirk Interesting stuff, explained in a clear fashion, thanks!

@kirk

argon instead of nitrogen because things are too open to do without a heavier-than-air blanket?

How do you think about the chlorine that's in there? I've had chlorine's oxyanions on my mind and so am wondering if they might play any role. (although I have no idea where their potentials sit amongst all this)

@idlestate no, nitrogen would do fine in this case! We just want to displace oxygen. That's not the case for lithium battery research though, where IIRC lithium metal can react with nitrogen, so they have to use argon gloveboxes. I use Ar just because it's easy to obtain small size argon cylinders from a welding supply. Nobody around me bothers with tiny nitrogen cylinders it seems. If I end up having to use a lot more inert gas I will probably rent a proper size Ar or N2 cylinder... In my dream lab I have a PSA nitrogen generator but not yet haha.

Chlorine's redox potentials should be a good bit higher than iodine's! I don't think that's at issue here, but I do remember hearing of an accident somewhere with a vanadium flow battery research prototype that had a chloride-containing electrolyte and it had something to do with it...

@idlestate also, some studies of these systems I think point to complexes being formed in solution, that contain both chloride and iodide/iodine, like ICl-, for example. They might show up with some spectroscopic techniques like Raman? So chloride can play more of a role than just supporting electrolyte.