Figure 2 The membrane in a vanadium redox flow battery suffers from oxidative aging. It needs to be stable for > 5 years in the battery. Chemical stability of membrane materials can be assessed in much shorter time (10s to 100s of hours) by immersing them in test solutions with higher oxidative strength. Knowing the functional relationship between oxidative strength of the environment and the rate of chemical aging allows to estimate membrane lifetime under nominal flow cell operating conditions.
Publications
Accelerated Stress Test Method for the Assessment of Membrane Lifetime in Vanadium Redox Flow Batteries. Fabio J. Oldenburg, Ayoub Ouarga, Thomas J. Schmidt, Lorenz Gubler. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 11(51), 2019. DOI: 10.1021/acsami.9b15736 Acknowledgements
Contact
The Swiss Federal Office of Energy (grant no. SI/501421-01) is kindly acknowledged for funding of the project. T.J. Schmidt thanks Innosuisse and the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) Heat and Electricity Storage. A. Ouarga thanks the Materials Science and Nanoengineering Department (MSN) of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) for financially supporting the research stay at PSI.
For further information, please contact PD Dr. Lorenz Gubler, Head of Research Group Membranes & Electrochemical Cells. +41 56 310 26 73 lorenz.gubler@psi.ch
11