Flow Battery Research Collective

@bipolaron I'll post a little recap of the conference with my general impressions after it's over!

@bipolaron this map is from 2020 so out of date but has some: https://flowbatteryforum.com/where-are-flow-batteries/

@owiecc KemiWatt in France I heard may have a marine project? They aren't here though. I will send projects your way if I hear of any though! Though at that scale it's mostly companies doing things in-house as I can see.

And from a CEO, I was told "why sell 10,000 small units in a highly regulated environment when I can sell 1 large battery to a utility and be done for the year"

@owiecc @altbot Flex base Invinity GWh-scale AI datacenter project in Switzerland recently breaking ground

@owiecc one industry stack developer noted "absolute lack of a command-and-control system for flow battery management of pump control, voltages, temperatures, etc" ie the industry is suffering there. Maybe a spot for open source?

@owiecc stream of consciousness reply: haven't seen anyone here interested in residential scale systems, major VRFB company Infinity is doing 4 MWh and above, many companies doing larger, customers are large businesses, public institutions, utilities, increasingly datacenters

Anyone have any questions for the flow battery industry players? At the world's biggest flow battery event at the moment! Vanadium, iron, organic systems, system integrators, electrode/membrane/pump manufacturers... #EnergyStorage #batteries #GridStorage #FlowBatteries #Energy

#RealTimeChem cycling an all-iron flow battery!!

First few "cycles" are oxidizing sacrificial excess ascorbic acid added to reduce initial Fe (III) present and minimize ambient oxygen. Charged 2 mAh and discharged until discharge capacity approached 2 mAh as ascorbic acid was oxidized. Now going to higher capacities #battery #OpenSource #OpenSourceHardware

Edit: after original post, realized that one connection lead was loose, and the negative pump tubing was blocked/degraded---PTFE liner had detached from the wall and formed some sort of blob inside the tubing, it seems.

Lab Notebook Entry #17

Another Zn-I test, started off cycling too aggressively and formed iodine it seems

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-17/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

Lab Notebook Entry #16

"Finished" the argon Zn-I test, but because it leaked. Made improvements to the dev kit design.

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-16/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

Lab Notebook Entry #15

10 cycles/2 days into the argon Zn-I test. It looks weird but... also good? I probably just jinxed it.

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-15/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

Lab Notebook Entry #14

Designed new reservoirs with Luer Lock fittings, started a Zn-I test under argon (Schlenk technique with welding gas), making progress on battery cycling setup for large-format cell

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-14/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

@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.

@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...

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

Lab Notebook Entry #13

Made it to 46 cycles/200 hours, the famed Zn-I "voltaic bulge" appears, blaming it on ambient oxygen. Time to bust out the inert gas

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-13/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

@Methylzero "I heard you like batteries, so I got you a battery for your battery..."

Definitely it's backing up a headless Raspberry Pi, a potentiostat, Arduino, and two peristaltic pumps.

Lab Notebook Entry #12

30 cycles, 133 hours, and now a UPS! Which has already saved my butt. And easier-to-read plots.

https://dualpower.supply/posts/lab-notebook-12/

#academia #OpenScience #Quarto #batteries #EnergyStorage #energy #science #electrochemistry

I mean stable as in, it hasn't obviously degraded. "Stable" cycling means different things to different people ofc.