Commercializing the Chloride-Containing All Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

In 2010, a new vanadium redox flow battery chemistry using chloride-containing supporting electrolytes was invented at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.^1,2 By adding a certain amount of chloride anions into the vanadium ions supporting solutions, stable V-Cl complexes form.  

This new chemistry substantially improves the electrolyte stability over a significant wider range of temperatures, eases the system operation requirements and thus improves the system reliability and durability. It practically doubles the system energy capacity, allowing compact product design with 5X footprint reduction, and further enhances VFB safety through containerization and onsite chemical volume reduction. This technology was transferred to UniEnergy Technologies, LLC in 2012, and won the US Government’ highest Award of Excellence in Technology Transfer in 2013.

With this advanced technology, the first compact vanadium AC battery, UET’s Uni.System^TM, was successfully developed in 2014.  This system has many unique features, including

• Factory integration:       precision assembly & QC
• Excellent safety:      non-flammable, aqueous electrolytes; built-in secondary containment
• Temperature agnostic: -40 °C to +50 °C
• SOC agnostic:      full capacity access
• Plug & Play:         rapid, low cost deployment
• Excellent Availability:       no stripping etc. required
• 20-year design life:      unlimited cycles
• 100% recyclable:      disposal contract included

 In this presentation, the detail parameters and performance of this system will be discussed.

1. Li^*, Kim, Wang, Vijayakumar, Nie, Chen, Zhang, Xia, Hu, Graff, Liu, Yang^*, Advanced Energy Materials, 1, 394~400, 2011.8th International Vanadium Symposium: Chemistry, Biological Chemistry, & Toxicology (vanadium8.org)

2. Kim, Vijayakumar, Wang, Zhang, Chen, Nie, Chen, Hu, Li^*, Yang^*, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 13, 18186-18193, 2011.