New redox flow battery from Thuringia

01/08/2016 | Invest in Thüringen

In order to speed up the energy turnaround, electricity is increasingly being generated from renewable sources like sun and wind. While this is a good move, these sources are subject to natural fluctuation, and ways must be found to store the electricity they produce. The decided disadvantage of the redox flow batteries that have so far been used for this purpose is that they use expensive metals and aggressive acids.

Now the research team associated with Professor Ulrich Schubert at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena has taken us all a step further toward a redox flow battery that is easy to use, safe and economical. The Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry and JenaBatteries GmbH in Jena cooperated to develop a battery based on polymers and a harmless solution of table salt. The most promising thing about the battery is that it is cheap to manufacture, yet still performs almost as well as its conventional counterparts. It successfully clocked up as many as 10,000 charging cycles - approximately equivalent to 20 years’ operating life - in the early tests without losing too much charge. It has an energy density of 10 watt-hours per liter. Ever ingenious, the research team is already working on even higher-performing successor systems. (maa)

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