In Situ Localized Current Distribution in a Vanadium Redox Flow Battery

Significant development of redox flow battery (RFB) technology has taken place recently to assess their viability as a large-scale energy storage system¹. Such systems have been implemented in select instances to demonstrate their feasibility; however there is still a lack of fundamental understanding regarding these devices. Of the numerous possible redox couples, the all-vanadium chemistry is the most commonly studied RFB. With the extensive literature available regarding this chemistry, there is still a lack of available diagnostic techniques to provide distributed measurements for understanding fundamental mechanisms within these cells.

The use of a printed circuit board in electrochemical cells provides a useful distributed diagnostic as demonstrated by its extensive use in fuel cells². The application of this technology to measure in-plane current distribution in a RFB has been previously demonstrated as shown in Figure 1.³This work will build upon that foundation to gain further insight regarding the influence of cell architecture and operating conditions on distribution.

References

1.  A.Z. Weber, M.M. Mench, J.P. Meyers, P.N. Ross, J.T. Gostick, Q. Liu, J. Appl. Electrochem., 41, 1137, (2011).

2.  J.J. Gagliardo, J.P. Owejan, T.A. Trabold, T.W. Tighe, Nucl. Instruments Methods Phys. Res. Sect. A Accel. Spectrometers, Detect. Assoc. Equip., 605, 115, (2009).

3.  J.T. Clement, T.A. Zawodzinski, M.M. Mench, 224th ECS Meet., San Francisco, CA, Oct. 27 – Nov. 1, 2013.

Figure 1.  In-plane current distribution for a 9 cm² vanadium RFB under 100 mA/cm² discharge conditions.