Jens Noack
Fraunhofer-Institute for Chemical Technology, Germany
Title: Recent results of the development of redox flow batteries for storage of renewable energies
Biography
Biography: Jens Noack
Abstract
The storage of electrical energy will become a key issue with increasing amounts of fluctuating renewable energies in a grid. Different technologies are established or in development to solve the need for storage at low cost. One of the technologies is redox flow batteries which can be separately scaled in terms of power and energy. Thus leads to potentially low storage cost if the storage medium has low cost and the storage time is in the range of some hours. During this talk we will present an overview about the recent results of our ongoing research and developments of redox flow batteries from fundamental half-cell studies up to the development of a 2 MW/20MWh vanadium redox flow battery. Our focus is mainly contributed with the studies of vanadium systems, but also includes organic, hydrogen/bromine, zinc/bromine, vanadium/air and other chemistries. We studied electrochemical reaction mechanisms with different electrochemical and spectro-electrochemical methods, electrolyte properties, aging of materials, cell; stack and system behavior. Our developments focused on cost reduction of flow batteries by improved production methods and materials like carbon nanotube based and mouldable thermoplastic electrode materials, injection molded components and system optimization. Additionally we will report about a kW-class vanadium air system, a super-cap vanadium redox flow hybrid uninterruptable power supply for telecommunication and the development of a 2 MW/20MWh experimental vanadium redox flow battery for the storage of wind energy at the Fraunhofer ICT campus.