Reduction of capacity decay in vanadium flow batteries by an electrolyte-reflow method

Electrolyte imbalance is a major issue with Vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) as it has a significant impact on electrolyte utilization and cycle life over extended charge-discharge cycling. This work seeks to reduce capacity decay and prolong cycle life of VFBs by adopting a novel electrolyte-reflow m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of power sources 2017-01, Vol.338, p.17-25
Main Authors: Wang, Ke, Liu, Le, Xi, Jingyu, Wu, Zenghua, Qiu, Xinping
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Capacity decay
Cycle life
Electrolyte
Rebalance
Reflow
Vanadium flow battery
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Summary:Electrolyte imbalance is a major issue with Vanadium flow batteries (VFBs) as it has a significant impact on electrolyte utilization and cycle life over extended charge-discharge cycling. This work seeks to reduce capacity decay and prolong cycle life of VFBs by adopting a novel electrolyte-reflow method. Different current density and various start-up time of the method are investigated in the charge-discharge tests. The results show that the capacity decay rate is reduced markedly and the cycle life is prolonged substantially by this method. In addition, the coulomb efficiency, voltage efficiency and energy efficiency remain stable during the whole cycle life test, which indicates this method has little impact on the long lifetime performance of the VFBs. The method is low-cost, simple, effective, and can be applied in industrial VFB productions. [Display omitted] •An electrolyte-reflow method for reducing capacity decay in VFB is presented.•Different current density and start-up time of the method are investigated.•With this method, the VFB cycle number increases from 206 to 466 at 160 mA cm−2.
ISSN:0378-7753
1873-2755
DOI:10.1016/j.jpowsour.2016.11.031