Leveraging Temperature-Dependent (Electro)Chemical Kinetics to Accelerate Redox Flow Battery Active Material Characterization
Authors: Fell Eric M. , Aziz Michael J. 
Published: September 2023

Aqueous Organic Redox Flow Batteries (AORFBs) have emerged as promising and potentially disruptive technologies for the storage of electrical energy from intermittent renewable sources for use over long discharge durations when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. AORFBs could become preferred over Li-ion batteries for grid-scale stationary storage due to their potentially low-cost active materials made of earth-abundant elements, their inherent non-flammability, and the intrinsic decoupling of energy and power capacities in the flow battery design. Our group has demonstrated that calendar life, rather than cycle life, limits molecular lifetimes in AORFBs due to various molecular instabilities that lead to side reactions, thus inhibiting performance [1]. To accurately determine molecular fade rates, we utilize potentiostatic cycling to avoid artifacts caused by drifts in internal resistance and employ volumetrically unbalanced, compositionally symmetric cell configurations to distinguish molecular fade from membrane crossover or cell unbalancing. Redox-active organic molecule stability has improved to the point that the most stable chemistries degrade at less than 1% per year [2]. With further lifetime increases, the measurement of lower capacity fade rates necessitates higher precision coulometry methods [3] and thermally accelerated degradation protocols [4] to determine which stabilizing approaches are most effective without waiting for multi-month cycling tests to quantify capacity fade.

We have developed a high-throughput setup for cycling AORFBs at elevated temperatures, providing a new dimension in the flow battery characterization space to explore. Capacity fade rates of previously published redox-active organic molecules, as functions of temperature, are evaluated in the high-throughput setup providing the ability to extrapolate fade rates to lower operating temperatures. The effect of temperature on electrochemical regeneration [5,6] of decomposed organic molecules is also explored. Collectively, these results highlight the importance of accelerated decomposition protocols to expedite the screening process of candidate molecules for long lifetime AORFBs, which may enable massive grid penetration of intermittent renewable energy.

[1] M.-A. Goulet and M. J. Aziz, “Flow Battery Molecular Reactant Stability Determined by Symmetric Cell Cycling Methods,” Journal of The Electrochemical Society
,
165, A1466 (2018).

[2] M. Wu, Y. Jing, A. A. Wong, E. M. Fell, S. Jin, Z. Tang, R. G. Gordon, M. J. Aziz, “Extremely Stable Anthraquinone Negolytes Synthesized from Common Precursors,” Chem, 6, 1432 (2020).

[3] T. M. Bond, J. C. Burns, D. A. Stevens, H. M. Dahn, J. R. Dahn, "Improving Precision and Accuracy in Coulombic Efficiency Measurements of Li-Ion Batteries", Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 160, A521 (2013).

[4] D. A. Stevens, R. Y. Ying, R. Fathi, J. N. Reimers, J. E. Harlow, J. R. Dahn, "Using High Precision Coulometry Measurements to Compare the Degradation Mechanisms of NMC/LMO and NMC-Only Automotive Scale Pouch Cells", Journal of The Electrochemical Society, 161, A1364 (2014).

[5] M. Wu, M. Bahari, E. M. Fell, R. G. Gordon, M. J. Aziz, “High-performance anthraquinone with potentially low cost for aqueous redox flow batteries”, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 9, 26709 (2021).

[6] Y. Jing, E. W. Zhao, M.-A. Goulet, M. Bahari, E. M. Fell, S. Jin, A. Davoodi, E. Jónsson, M. Wu, C. P. Grey, R. G. Gordon, M. J. Aziz, “In situ electrochemical recomposition of decomposed redox-active species in aqueous organic flow batteries,” Nature Chemistry, 14, 1103, (2022).

Figure caption: Capacity fade rates of an anthraquinone derivative, measured in symmetric cells, as a function of temperature.

Figure 1