Replacement of flow battery

You might believe that flow batteries are a new technology merely invented over the past few years. Actually, the development of flow batteries can be traced back to the 1970s when Lawrence Thaller at NASA created the first prototype of this battery type.

Among the various types, some well-known variants include vanadium redox flow batteries (VRFBs) and zinc-based flow batteries. Flow batteries work by storing energy in chemical form in separate tanks and utilizing electrochemical reactions to generate electricity. Specifically, each tank of a flow battery contains one of the electrolyte solutions.

It is where electrochemical reactions occur between two electrolytes, converting chemical energy into electrical energy. Unlike traditional rechargeable batteries, the electrolytes in a flow battery are not stored in the cell stack around the electrodes; rather, they are stored in exterior tanks separately.

Compared to lithium-ion batteries, flow batteries offer superior scalability due to their ability to easily increase energy capacity by adding more electrolytes to the tanks. Lithium-ion batteries, on the other hand, have limited scalability, as their capacity is primarily determined by the number of cells in the battery pack.

Actually, the development of flow batteries can be traced back to the 1970s when Lawrence Thaller at NASA created the first prototype of this battery type. Now flow batteries haev evolved into a promising technology for certain solar energy storage applications. The schematic view of a flow battery | Source: ScienceDirect

Thanks to their deep discharge capability and excellent scalability, flow batteries excel at storing energy for longer durations, from hours to even days. Conversely, lithium-ion batteries have a typical duration of several hours. "Flow battery at INL's microgrid test bed" (cropping) by Idaho National Laboratory is licensed under CC BY 4.0 DEED.