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arXiv · 1610.04338

Membraneless flow battery leveraging flow-through heterogeneous porous media for improved power density and reduced crossover

Matthew E. Suss·Kameron Conforti·Laura Gilson·Cullen R. Buie·Martin Z. Bazant
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Abstract

A key factor preventing the market penetration of renewable, intermittent energy sources, such as solar, wind and wave, is the lack of cost-effective energy storage options to counteract intermittency. Here, we propose and demonstrate a novel flow battery architecture that replaces traditional ion-exchange membranes with less expensive heterogeneous flow-through porous media. We present an experimentally-validated model which demonstrates that our architecture promises reduced crossover of reactive species compared to typical membraneless systems employing co-laminar flows in open channels. In addition, our prototype battery exhibits significantly improved power density (0.925 W/cm2) and maximum current density (3 A/cm2) compared to previous membraneless systems.

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Matthew E. Suss, Kameron Conforti, Laura Gilson, Cullen R. Buie, Martin Z. Bazant. 2016-10-14. Membraneless flow battery leveraging flow-through heterogeneous porous media for improved power density and reduced crossover. https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.04338

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