Porous Conducting Membranes and Their Application in Vanadium Flow Battery

The vanadium flow battery (VFB) has received widely attention due to its attractive features for large scale energy storage. One of the central problems that hinder the commercialization of VFB is the high cost and low selectivity of currently used perfluorinated membranes (Nafion). Although the non-perfluorinated hydrocarbon polymers like sulfonated or quaternary ammoniated aromatic polymers are widely investigated, these membranes often suffer from poor chemical instability which is proved to be induced by the introduction of ion exchange groups.  Recently, we reported the application of porous membranes in VFB1. The idea is based on separating vanadium ions from protons via pore size exclusion. The new design and concept can potentially overcome the traditional restriction from ion exchange membranes and provide more materials option. Followed our idea, different kind of porous membranes separators were explored and investigated in VFB. Quite impressive progress was achieved via optimizing the membrane materials and morphology.

In this presentation, the current status of VFB porous membranes, including morphology control, structure-relation will be discussed in detail.

 References

[1]    Hongzhang Zhang, Huamin Zhang, Xianfeng Li, Zhensheng Mai, Jianlu Zhang, Energy & Environmental Science 2011, 4 (5), 1676 – 1679

[2]    Xianfeng Li, Huamin Zhang*, Zhensheng Mai, Hongzhang Zhang, Ivo Vankelecom, Energy & Environmental Science, 2011, 4 (4), 1147 – 1160