Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - 34

Power & Energy
Next-Generation Flow Battery Design
Sugar additive plays a surprise role, boosting flow battery capacity and longevity for this grid
energy resilience design.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA
A
common food and medicine additive
has shown it can boost the capacity
and longevity of a next-generation
flow battery design in a record-setting
experiment. A research team from the
Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory reports that
the flow battery, a design optimized for
electrical grid energy storage, maintained
its capacity to store and release
energy for more than a year of continuous
charge and discharge.
Flow batteries provide long-lasting, rechargeable
energy storage, particularly
for grid reliability. Unlike solid-state batteries,
flow batteries store energy in liquid
electrolyte, shown here in yellow
and blue. Researchers at PNNL developed
a cheap and effective new flow battery
that uses a simple sugar derivative
called β-cyclodextrin (pink) to speed up
the chemical reaction that converts energy
stored in chemical bonds (purple
to orange), releasing energy (electrons)
to power an external circuit. A parallel
reversible process (red-green) in the
positive catholyte solution balances the
positive and negative charges during
charge and discharge.
The study, just published in the journal
Joule, details the first use of a dissolved
simple sugar called β-cyclodextrin, a derivative
of starch, to boost battery longevity
and capacity.
In a series of experiments, the scientists
optimized the ratio of chemicals in the system
until it achieved 60 percent more
peak power. Then they cycled the battery
over and over for more than a year, only
stopping the experiment when the plastic
tubing failed. During all that time, the flow
battery barely lost any of its activity to recharge.
This is the first laboratory-scale
flow battery experiment to report more
than a year of continuous use with minimal
loss of capacity.
The β-cyclodextrin additive is also the
first to speed the electrochemical reaction
that stores and then releases the flow battery
energy, in a process called homogeneous
catalysis. This means the sugar does
34
Flow battery researcher Ruozhu Feng poses with ingredients for a long-lasting grid energy battery.
(Image: Andrea Starr, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Researchers prepare an experimental flow battery electrolyte that has shown long life in the laboratory
setting. (Image: Andrea Starr, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
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Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024

Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - Intro
Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - Sponsor
Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - Cov1
Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - Cov2
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Tech Briefs Magazine - February 2024 - Cov3
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