Enhanced Durability and Stability of Solid Oxide Fe-Air Redox Battery with the Carbothermic Reaction Derived Energy Storage Unit
Authors: Zhao Xuan , Li Xue , Gong Yunhui , Huang Kevin 
Published: February 2020

Recently, a new class of solid oxide metal air redox batteries has been demonstrated and investigated1-17. This new class of metal air redox batteries is based on a completely new energy storage mechanism, which takes the advantage of the solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) and hydrogen chemical-looping technologies1-10. The key components of these batteries consist of a regenerative solid oxide fuel cell (RSOFC) and a metal-metal oxide energy storage unit (ESU) 1-17. By substituting the chemistry of the element, the metal-air chemistries vary. So far we have successfully demonstrated the Fe-air1, 2, W-air8 and Mo-air7 redox batteries with this new battery concept. Other groups also studied several metal-air chemistries, including Fe-air11-15, Mg-air16 and Si-air17batteries.

However, only a few works reported the durability and stability of this type of batteries at the intermediate temperature range. Here we report that the carbothermic reaction derived Fe-based ESU can enhance the durability and stability of such a battery by 214%, compared with our previously reported Fe-based ESU in 100 continuous discharge-and-charge cycles. Our preliminary results show that the enhancement is due to the highly porous nanostructure (as shown in Fig.1) obtained by the carbothermic reaction.

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