Title: Investigation of Kinetically Favorable Chromium Speciation Distribution for Iron Chromium Redox Flow Batteries
Authors: Segel Becca , Parr Zachary , McKone James 
Published: August 2024

Chromium is a promising active material for redox flow battery (RFB) electrolytes due to its low cost and reduction potential very near the negative limit of the electrochemical window of water. However, many challenges exist with the performance of the Cr3+/2+, most notably sluggish electron-transfer kinetics and parasitic hydrogen evolution during the charge cycle. This presentation will focus on our recent efforts to overcome these challenges by understanding the interplay between electrolyte composition, speciation, and electron-transfer kinetics for the aqueous Cr3+/2+ redox couple.

Among the earliest published work on flow batteries was a program based at NASA introducing the iron chromium redox flow battery (ICRFB) [1,2]. These studies were valuable in demonstrating both the promise and the complications of chromium for flow battery electrolytes. The NASA team went to great lengths to enhance chromium redox kinetics and suppress the hydrogen evolution via extensive modification of the carbon negative electrode with Au, Pb, and Bi additives. The present study is based on a key observation from this early work that the electron-transfer rates for Cr-chloride complexes depend strongly on the inner-sphere coordination environment, and specifically the number of chloride ions directly bound to the Cr center.

Extensive prior studies from the inorganic coordination chemistry literature further demonstrate that Cr(III) chloride complexes undergo slow equilibration in aqueous solutions to form distributions of four species where the coordination environment around the metal center can be described generally as [CrClx(H2O)6-x](3-x)+ with 0 < x < 3 [3,4]. Each of these species yields a distinct optical absorption signature, enabling quantification of the composition with UV-VIS spectroscopy. Our overarching hypothesis, based on the early NASA work, was that increased chloride coordination (i.e., higher values of x in CrClx(H2O)6-x) would yield enhanced electron-transfer kinetics by reducing inner-sphere reorganization barriers associated with aquo ligands, or by enhancing catalytic mechanisms mediated by chloride surface adsorbates. Thus, we measured optical absorbance and electrochemical reversibility for Cr(III) chloride solutions with HCl, NaCl, and LiCl supporting electrolytes over a range of total chloride concentration from 0.1 to ~10 mol/L.

Representative results are summarized in Figure 1 for 0.1 M CrCl3 in aqueous LiCl. Notably, at Au electrodes the reversibility of the Cr3+/2+ redox feature increases dramatically as chloride concentration increases above 5 mol/L (Figure 1a). This shift in reversibility is broadly correlated with UV-VIS results (Figure 1b) demonstrating that the primary Cr(III) species present initially remains the predominant species in the aqueous environment for high concentrations of chloride over time, but the predominant species shifts significantly at lower concentrations of LiCl. Ongoing work, which will be discussed in this presentation, is focused on full quantification of the relationship between speciation and electron-transfer kinetics as well as performance properties for ICRFBs with a range of supporting electrolyte concentrations. We anticipate that understanding the most kinetically favorable speciation distribution will allow us to develop improved electrolytes for functional ICRFBs.

References [1] N. H. Hagedorn, NASA Redox Storage System Development Project. Arlington, VA, 1983. [2] Thaller, L. H. Intersoc. Energy Conversion Eng. Conf. Boston, MA, 1979. [3] Magini, Mauro. The Journal of Chemical Physics. 73, no. 5, 2008. [4] Gates, Henry S., and Edward L. King. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 80, no. 19, 1958.

Figure 1