Indian Researchers Make Dendrite-free Zinc-iron Redox Flow Battery

• The scientists explained their invention in the paper "A Dendrite Free Zn-Fe Hybrid Redox Flow Battery for Renewable Energy Storage space," published in the journal Energy Storage.
• The battery did disappoint any kind of indicators of dendrite formation, overcoming one of the key obstacles for redox-flow batteries based upon these low-cost, abundant products.

Indian researchers have created a redox flow battery based upon zinc and iron, which showed strong storage features and also no indicators of degradation over 30 charge-discharge cycles. Furthermore, the battery did disappoint any kind of signs of dendrite development, getting over among the crucial difficulties for redox-flow batteries based on these inexpensive, bountiful materials.

The scientists defined their invention in the paper "A Dendrite Free Zn-Fe Hybrid Redox Flow Battery for Renewable Energy Storage," published in the journal Energy Storage.

Concerning 2 thirds of global greenhouse discharges is triggered by burning of fossil fuels for energy functions and this has spurred great research study rate of interest to develop renewable energy modern technologies based on wind, solar power and so on. Redox Flow Batteries (RFB) are receiving broad attention as scalable energy-storage systems to attend to the intermittency issues of renewable energy resources.

However, for widespread commercialization, the redox flow batteries need to be economically viable as well as eco-friendly. Zinc based batteries are excellent selection for energy storage devices due to the fact that zinc is planet plentiful and also zinc steel has a modest particular ability of 820 mA hg − 1 as well as high volumetric ability of 5851 mA h cm − 3. In their paper, the researchers show a zinc-iron (Zn-Fe) hybrid RFB employing Zn/Zn(II) and also Fe(II)/ Fe(III) redox couples as positive and negative redox systems, respectively, separated by a self-made anion exchange membrane (AEM).

The battery, say the scientists, supplies an excellent discharge voltage of roughly 1.34 V at 25 mA cm − 2, with a coulombic efficiency (CE) of 92%, voltage efficiency (VE) of 85% as well as energy efficiency (EE) of ~ 78% for 30 charge-discharge cycles. Repetitive galvanostatic charge/discharge cycles show no deterioration in efficiency, confirming the outstanding stability of the system.

A crucial improvement in today Zn-Fe hybrid redox flow battery with AEM separator is that no dendrite development was observed on zinc electrode on duplicated charge-discharge cycles, which was the severe disadvantage of several previously reported zinc based redox flow batteries.

This research study's results reveal that the operating problems are important influence factors for the cell efficiency as well as the Zn-Fe RFB can exhibit great efficiency at low concentration (1 M) and at reduced current density (15 mA cm-2). "Hence, we have efficiently demonstrated working of a high efficiency and also stable Zn-Fe hybrid redox flow battery without any dendrite growth during zinc deposition by maximizing charge-discharge problems and also using an anion exchange membrane as separator," end the researchers.

The paper was co-authored by C. B. Jeena, P. J. Elsa, P. P. Moly, K. J. Ambily, and V. T. Joy, and the research study was supported by the P.G. and also Research Study Department of Chemistry, Christ College, Kerala.