Comparison of Zinc Bromine and Zinc Iodine Flow Batteries: From Electrolde to Electrolyte
Authors: Jameson Alexander , Gyenge Elod 
Published: July 2022

Research in flow batteries and their application in large scale energy storage has received a growing amount of attention and promise over the past two decades. Although the energy density of flow batteries is low relative to the Li-ion battery, their comparatively lower costs, preferred safety, and ease of scalability has made flow batteries some of the most promising contenders for large-scale stationary energy storage, and are currently commercially available for this purpose. The zinc-bromine flow battery (ZBFB), despite being one of the first proposed flow batteries in the 1980s, has only recently gained enough traction to compete with the well established all-vanadium redox flow batteries. This is largely due to the high solubility of the bromine redox species in aqueous electrolytes, which has allowed the ZBFB is achieve double the energy density of the all-vanadium technology. Recently, an analogue to the zinc-bromine flow battery was introduced: the zinc-iodine flow battery (ZIFB). Similar to the ZBFB, the main advantages of this technology arose from the high solubility of the electroactive species in the electrolyte (iodine/tri-iodide). The solubility of the iodine redox species is even higher than that of analogous bromine electrolytes, and accordingly, the highest energy densities of all aqueous flow batteries to date has been for the ZIFB.

Despite the similarities between the two technologies, they are held back by different issues, and so different approaches have been taken to improving the performances of the ZBFB and ZIFB. The ZBFB primarily suffers from a low power-density due to the sluggish kinetics of the bromine redox couple. Therefore, a majority of research on the ZBFB has focused on identifying new, low cost electrode materials that minimize kinetic losses at the bromine half-cell. In contrast, a majority of research on the ZIFB has been on improvements to the electrolyte composition. The ZIFB is plagued by issues of a thick, high impedance iodine film that forms at the positive electrode on charge. Due to the strong Lewis acid nature of the iodine species, a variety of charge-transfer complexes can be formed in the electrolyte, having a variety of effects on the battery performance.

This presentation provides an overview on the similarities and differences between the ZBFB and ZIFB technologies. We performed a variety of half-cell and flow battery tests varying the electrode and electrolyte compositions. A number of low cost carbon materials are used as electrode materials, along with a variety of modifications to the bromine and iodine electrolytes. Through the use of high-surface area carbon blacks, the exchange current of the bromine redox couple is able to be increased by two orders to magnitude in comparison to glassy carbon. Additions of MSA or other acids to the ZBFB increases the oxidation kinetics greatly, and accordingly the overall energy efficiency of the ZBFB. For the ZIFB, the presence of high surface area catalysts have little to no effect on the overall performance. We found that in aqueous electrolytes, the iodine electrode is largely held back by the iodine film that forms on charge. Therefore, by adding ions to the electrolyte such as Br-, Cl-, and SO4
2-, we were able to increase the solubility of the iodine film and the reversibility of the battery, and accordingly its efficiency. Although the ZIFB initially performs better than the ZBFB, after making systematic adjustments to both the electrode and electrolyte compositions, the discrepancy between their performances is largely minimized, demonstrating both can be viable for the future of large-scale energy storage.

Figure 1