Engineering Lung-Inspired Flow Field Geometries for Electrochemical Flow Cells with Stereolithography 3D Printing

Muñoz-Perales, Vanesa; Heijden, Maxime van der; García-Salaberri, Pablo A.; Vera, Marcos; Forner‐Cuenca, Antoni

doi:10.1021/acssuschemeng.3c00848

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Figure 3(B) represents the electrochemical equivalent circuit (EEC) chosen for this electrochemical flow cell, which consists of one parallel R|CPE circuit embedded within a second parallel R|CPE circuit. This EEC can easily fit a wide range of EIS features, [58] including those in FBs [59] . In this system, the CPE element in the second R|CPE circuit (CPE 2) takes into account the inhomogeneities of the porous electrodes, and the non‐uniform potential and current distribution [60] .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This EEC can easily fit a wide range of EIS features, [58] including those in FBs. [59] In this system, the CPE element in the second R j CPE circuit (CPE 2) takes into account the inhomogeneities of the porous electrodes, and the non-uniform potential and current distribution. [60] A better fit was obtained, since a Warburg element would not be able to capture the EIS response of these non-ideal hydrodynamic porous electrodes.…”

Section: Quantification Of Mass Transfer Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improved Vanadium Flow Battery Performance through a Pulsating Electrolyte Flow Regime

De Wolf,

Rossen,

De Rop

et al. 2023

Batteries & Supercaps

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The interest in flow batteries as energy storage devices is growing due to the rising share of intermittent renewable energy sources. In this work, the performance of a vanadium flow battery is improved, without altering the electrochemical cell, by applying a pulsating flow. This novel flow battery flow regime aims to enhance performance by improving its mass transfer properties. Both the pulse volume and frequency have an influence on the battery performance, and lead to a 38.7 % increase in accessible discharge capacity compared to the conventional steady flow regime at values of 0.40 cm3 and 2.4 Hz in this cell, respectively. Furthermore, at these parameter settings a reduction of the mass transfer resistance by 71.4 % is achieved at 0.2 cm3/min ⋅ cm2. These results show that a pulsating flow can be beneficial in certain conditions, opening new possibilities for boosting performance in flow batteries.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Quantification Of Mass Transfer Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

Improved Vanadium Flow Battery Performance through a Pulsating Electrolyte Flow Regime

De Wolf,

Rossen,

De Rop

et al. 2023

Batteries & Supercaps

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“…For this flow field, species depletion occurs from the inlet channel over the rib to the outlet channel, while species concentration along the channels can be assumed constant. [78] Thus, a network-inseries approach over the electrode length is not necessary. The computational time to run a 1-layer electrode with the FTFF using the network-in-series approach and applied potentials of À 0.2-0 V with À 0.02 V step intervals, was 90 min for a 1×17 mm 2 electrode using a single Intel® CoreTM i7-8750H CPU.…”

Section: Pore Network Modelingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These small inertial effects could result in less electrolyte mixing, causing a higher mass transfer resistance in flow-through designs. [63,78,86]…”

Section: Pressure Drop Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the Role of Electrode Thickness on Redox Flow Cell Performance**

Muñoz‐Perales,

van der Heijden,

de Haas

et al. 2023

ChemElectroChem

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The electrode thickness is a critical design parameter to engineer high performance redox flow cells by impacting the available surface area for reactions, current and potential distributions, and required pumping power. To date, redox flow cell assemblies employ repurposed off‐the‐shelf fibrous electrodes which feature a broad range of thicknesses. However, comprehensive guidelines to select the optimal electrode thickness for a given reactor architecture remain elusive. Here, we investigate the effect of the electrode thickness in the range of 200–1100 μm on the cell performance by stacking electrode layers in four different flow cell configurations – Freudenberg paper and ELAT cloth electrodes combined with flow‐through and interdigitated flow fields. We employ a suite of polarization, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and pressure drop measurements together with pore network modeling simulations to correlate the electrode thickness for various reactor designs to the electrochemical and hydraulic performance. We find that thicker electrodes (420 μm paper electrodes and 812 μm cloth electrodes) are beneficial in combination with flow‐through flow fields, whereas when using interdigitated flow fields, thinner electrodes (210 μm paper electrodes and 406 μm cloth electrodes) result in a better current density and pressure drop trade‐off. We hope our findings will aid researchers and technology practitioners in designing their electrochemical flow cells under convective operation.

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“…Closing this knowledge-gap can aid the design of flow fields, electrode microstructure, and surface functionalization strategies relevant to electrochemical reactors. [16][17][18] The objective of this research is to understand the relationship between electrolyte infiltration and accessible surface area in macroporous carbon electrodes commonly used for redox flow batteries and other flooded electrochemical reactors. We couple operando imaging with electrochemical diagnostic techniques to study the parameters that affect the wetting of porous electrodes, such as the flow field design and the electrode hydrophilicity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Correlating Electrolyte Infiltration with Accessible Surface Area in Macroporous Electrodes using Neutron Radiography

Boz,

van der Heijden,

Jacquemond

et al. 2024

J. Electrochem. Soc.

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Carbon-based porous electrodes are commonly employed in electrochemical technologies as they provide a high surface area for reactions, an open structure for fluid transport, and enable compact reactor architectures. In electrochemical cells that sustain liquid electrolytes (e.g., redox flow batteries, CO2 electrolyzers, capacitive deionization), the nature of the interaction between the three phases - solid, liquid and gas - determines the accessible surface area for reactions, which fundamentally determines device performance. Thus, it is critical to understand the correlation between the electrolyte infiltration in the porous electrode and the resulting accessible surface area in realistic reactor architectures. To tackle this question, here we simultaneously perform neutron radiography with electrochemical measurements to correlate macroscopic electrode saturation/wetting with accessible surface area. We find that for untreated electrodes featuring neutral wettability with water, the electrode area remains underutilized even at elevated flow rates, both for interdigitated and parallel flow fields. Conversely, increasing the electrode hydrophilicity results in an order-of-magnitude increase in accessible surface area at comparable electrode saturation, and is less influenced by the electrolyte flow rate. Ultimately, we reveal useful correlations between reactor architectures and electrode utilization and provide a method that is broadly applicable to flow electrochemical reactors.

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Engineering Lung-Inspired Flow Field Geometries for Electrochemical Flow Cells with Stereolithography 3D Printing

Cited by 16 publications

References 77 publications

Improved Vanadium Flow Battery Performance through a Pulsating Electrolyte Flow Regime

Improved Vanadium Flow Battery Performance through a Pulsating Electrolyte Flow Regime

Understanding the Role of Electrode Thickness on Redox Flow Cell Performance**

Correlating Electrolyte Infiltration with Accessible Surface Area in Macroporous Electrodes using Neutron Radiography

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