Experimental Benchmarking of Redox Flow Cells

Abstract

There are increasing numbers of scientific articles dedicated to developments in the field of redox flow batteries. To date it is most common to provide efficiency values as a measure of performance. However, there are no agreed standard experimental conditions for these measurements, and so their merit as a tool for comparing different innovations among research groups is put into question. In the following manuscript, various experimental precautions are outlined to reduce experimental artefacts. Original experimental measurements on vanadium flow cells, together with data from the literature, are examined to explore efficiencies and two alternative benchmarking metrics: resistivity and self-discharge current density. The sensitivity of these parameters to current density, temperature, flow rate and state-of-charge range are examined, from which it is concluded that resistivity and self-discharge current density exhibit superior properties to efficiencies for quantifying flow battery improvements.

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“…internal short-curcuiting) current is about 4-10 mA cm −2 (see Appendix J). [305][306][307] The second reason to operate flow batteries at larger current densities than SEAM batteries is due to the higher cost per area of an RFB stack compared to a SEAM battery. This is because the contemporary RFB stack design requires the use of costly bipolar plates with channels, while SEAM batteries avoid them.…”

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