The aqueous iron (Fe) redox flow battery here captures energy in the form of electrons (e-) from renewable energy sources and stores it by changing the charge of iron in the flowing liquid electrolyte.
What is an iron-based flow battery?
Iron-based flow batteries designed for large-scale energy storage have been around since the 1980s, and some are now commercially available. What makes this battery different is that it stores energy in a unique liquid chemical formula that combines charged iron with a neutral-pH phosphate-based liquid electrolyte, or energy carrier.
Benefiting from the low cost of iron electrolytes, the overall cost of the all-iron flow battery system can be reached as low as $76.11 per kWh based on a 10 h system with a power of 9.9 kW. This work provides a new option for next-generation cost-effective flow batteries for long duration large scale energy storage.
Are all-liquid flow batteries suitable for long-term energy storage?
Among the numerous all-liquid flow batteries, all-liquid iron-based flow batteries with iron complexes redox couples serving as active material are appropriate for long duration energy storage because of the low cost of the iron electrolyte and the flexible design of power and capacity.
Are all-iron flow batteries a promising prospect for LDEs?
Combined with high reliability, high performance and low cost, the all-iron flow battery demonstrated a very promising prospect for LDES. The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
What is an example of an all-liquid all-iron flow battery?
For instance, Yan et al. came up with an all-liquid all-iron flow battery constructed by coupling an iron-triethanolamine (TEA) redox pair with an iron-cyanide redox pair in an alkaline aqueous system.
Should redox flow batteries be based on iron complexes?
While vanadium redox flow batteries are the most mature and popular technology in the family of flow batteries, adopting iron complexes as the active materials of choice could alleviate the challenges associated with the supply chain, particularly in the context of large-scale energy storage applications.