UK Redox Flow Battery Network
The objectives of UK RFBN:
Create a supportive UK-based community of researchers focused on redox flow battery (RFB) technology.
Collaborate to develop advanced materials and innovate RFB energy storage with world leading research.
Help identify research and development opportunities, working closely with industry and users.
To advocate for RFB energy storage systems as key technologies in near future UK energy networks.
To raise awarness of RFB technology and its advantages in the public domain
This network aims to bring UK expertise in the field of redox flow batteries (RFBs) together. Research into the technology is demanding, requiring researchers to be fundamental electrochemists, synthetic chemists, chemical and electrical engineers, and computational scientists to name a few disciplines.
Redox flow batteries are a deceptively complex technology requiring advances in the membranes, electrode materials, framework materials, electrochemical cell design, and electrolytes, in order to develop a viable energy storage system. Collaboration and sharing best practice is the only feasible way to innovate and advance all these aspects of the system and establish a world-leading position in decarbonisation technology. .
With the support of the EPSRC Networking Centre for Applied Materials of Integrated Energy Materials (CAM-IES), this network has been established dedicated to advances in UK RFB research. By working together, sharing our research and insight, as well as identifying challenges and opportunities, we can progress in this field considerably faster and regain the prominence once held in the UK for flow battery research.
European Flow Battery Network (FLORES)
FLORES is a network of 9 EU-funded projects working on next-generation redox-flow batteries
With a combined EU funding of >41 million €, 89 organisations from thirteen research projects are joining forces in FLORES to exploit synergies and publicise their results in this dynamic research field.
Follow their work on social media
What is a Redox Flow Battery?
Redox flow batteries (RFBs) are energy storage systems that operate somewhere between fuel cells and batteries. They are rechargeable battery systems comprising vats of chargeable liquids and seperate electrochemical stacks. Electricity is used to directly charge these reservoirs of solution that are pumped through the electrochemical cell stacks. The solutions return to the reservoir or pass back through the stacks to get further charged. The electricity delivered to the solution can then be returned, on demand, by reversing the polarity of the stacks, and allowing the chraged electrolytes to discharge. In this sense, the system is like a fuel cell with charged liquid fuel instead of gasses.
Not any electrolyte will do; the key to a RFB is having stable oxidation states in solution. Each half of the battery needs at least two stable oxidation states for the material being charged and discharged. The state-of-the-art is vanadium, a metal that has 4 stable oxidation states in acidic water. This means both halves of the battery use vanadium, but one side oscillates between the 2+ and 3+ states (the negative side), and the other side oscillates between the 4+ and 5+ states (the positive side). Having the same metal on both sides means mixing is not such an issue.
Why flow batteries?
Flow batteries are ideal for large-scale, long duration electricity storage. They are low maintenance, highly efficient, and can last decades or more, as the chemical reactions are intrinsically low impact. While lithium batteries lose capacity within tens of cycles, flow batteries last for tens of thousands of charge-discharge cycles, because everything stay in solution.
The split reservoir to stack design of the flow battery means they are uniquely modular in their design. If you want to store more energy, you simply increase the size of your tanks. Want more power? Then add more stacks.
While vanadium is the most established form of the RFB, there are so many other chemistries and designs. The flow battery is inherently adaptable, and this opens it up to game changing innovation. Non-metal designs, high voltage, hybrid, semi solid - there are so many options that flow batteries can be developed to be the sustainable, low cost and long-lasting energy storage to make decarbonisation possible