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Reducing capacity fade in vanadium redox flow batteries by altering charging and discharging currents
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Reducing capacity fade in vanadium redox flow batteries by altering charging and discharging currents

Ertan Agar, A. Benjamin, C. R. Dennison, D. Chen, M. A. Hickner and E. C. Kumbur
Journal of power sources, v 246, pp 767-774
15 Jan 2014
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpowsour.2013.08.023
Featured in Collection :   UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel

Abstract

Chemistry Chemistry, Physical Energy & Fuels Materials Science, Multidisciplinary Science & Technology Electrochemistry Materials Science Physical Sciences Technology
In this study, the operation of a vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) under asymmetric current conditions (i.e., different current densities during charge and discharge) was investigated as a technique to reduce its capacity loss. Two different membrane types (a convection-dominated membrane and a diffusion-dominated membrane) were analyzed. In these analyses, the charging current density was varied while the discharging current was held constant. For both membranes, it was found that increasing the charging current decreases the net convective crossover of vanadium ions, which reduces the capacity loss of the battery. When the tested membranes were compared, the improvement in capacity retention was found to be larger for the diffusion-dominated membrane (12.4%) as compared to the convection-dominated membrane (7.1%). The higher capacity retention in the diffusion-dominated membrane was attributed to the reduction in the cycling time (and hence, suppressed contribution of diffusion) due to the increased charging current. While asymmetric current operation helps reduce capacity loss, it comes at the expense of a reduction in the voltage efficiencies. Increasing the charging current was found to increase the ohmic losses, which lead to a decrease of 6% and 4.3% in the voltage efficiencies of the convection-dominated and diffusion-dominated membranes, respectively. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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95 citations in Web of Science
96 citations in Scopus

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#7 Affordable and Clean Energy

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Chemistry, Physical
Electrochemistry
Energy & Fuels
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
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