Seawater as an alternative to deionized water for electrolyte preparations in vanadium redox flow batteries

L. Wei, L. Zeng, M.C. Wu, X.Z. Fan and T.S. Zhao

Applied Energy, 2019, vol. 251, issue C, -

Abstract: The vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) has been identified as one of the most promising candidates for large-scale energy storage systems. Nevertheless, the high capital cost, particularly the cost of electrolytes, has hindered its broad market penetration. In this work, we use abundant seawater to replace deionized water for VRFB electrolyte preparation. Testing results show that both the coulombic efficiency and capacity retention rate in the case of using seawater electrolytes are higher than using the deionized-water electrolytes, although the battery voltage efficiency slightly decreases due to the lower mass transport diffusivity of V3+ in seawater. Moreover, the solubility of vanadium sulfate in seawater increases by ∼12%. The overall cost of seawater-prepared electrolytes is cheaper by 3.6% than that of the deionized water prepared electrolytes. The results indicate that seawater offers the potential to replace deionized water as a new avenue for VRFB electrolyte preparations.

Keywords: VRFB; Impurity; Seawater; Electrolyte (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261919310189
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:251:y:2019:i:c:72

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113344

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().